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Nov. 2024 News (Pt. 3)

Friday, November 15, 2024 13:48
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Editor’s Choice: Scroll below for our monthly blend of mainstream and alternative November 2024 news and views

Note: Excerpts are from the authors’ words except for subheads and occasional “Editor’s notes” such as this. 


Nov. 15

Top Headlines

DAWN OF A NEW TRUMP ERA

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Commentaries On Trump Team

Earlier Trump Transition Announcements, Analysis

Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights

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More Election News, Analysis

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More On Trump Prosecutions, Other Legal News

Donald Trump and Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2023. (Reuters photos of Donald Trump by Tasos Katopodis, left, and of Jack Smith by Kevin Wurm).

U.S. Immigration

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U.S. Election Surprises, Suspicions

greg palast vigilantesGreg Palast Investigates, Here's what we do now -- A personal note, Greg Palast and the Palast Investigations Team, Nov. 10, 2024. Lessons from the investigative documentary on voter suppression 'Vigilantes.

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Energy, Transportation, Climate Change, Disasters

Media, High-Tech, Culture, Education

Top Stories

Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Bozeman, Mont., on Friday, Aug 9, 2024 (New York Times photo by Louise Johns).Former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Bozeman, Mont., on Friday, Aug 9, 2024 (New York Times photo by Louise Johns).

President-Elect Donald J. Trump (New York Times photo by Doug Mills).

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: Trump Takes On the Agencies That Stymied His First-Term Agenda, Peter Baker, Nov. 15, 2024. The Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies were the areas of government that proved to be the most stubborn obstacles to Donald Trump.

President-elect Donald J. Trump is wasting little time in taking on the three governmental institutions that most frustrated his political ambitions during his first term and making clear he will not brook resistance in his second.

With his selections of lieutenants to lead the Justice Department, Pentagon and intelligence agencies, Mr. Trump passed over the sorts of establishment figures he installed in those posts eight years ago in favor of firebrand allies with unconventional résumés whose most important qualification may be loyalty to him.

The choices of Matt Gaetz for attorney general, Pete Hegseth for defense secretary and Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence in the past few days shocked a capital that perhaps should not have been all that surprised. Anyone who listened to Mr. Trump’s promises and grievances on the campaign trail over the past couple of years could have easily anticipated that he would elevate compatriots willing to execute his hostile takeover of government.

If confirmed, Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Hegseth and Ms. Gabbard would constitute the lead shock troops in Mr. Trump’s self-declared war on what he calls the “deep state.” All three have echoed his conviction that government is seeded with career public servants who actively thwarted his priorities while he was in office and targeted him after he left. None of them has the kind of experience relevant to these jobs comparable to predecessors of either party, but they can all be expected to take “a blowtorch” to the status quo, to use Stephen K. Bannon’s term for Mr. Gaetz.

“You tried to destroy Trump; you tried to imprison Trump; you tried to break Trump,” Mr. Bannon, a onetime White House strategist for Mr. Trump, said on his podcast on Wednesday after Mr. Gaetz’s nomination was announced. “He’s not breakable. You couldn’t destroy him. And now he has turned on you.”

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump selects Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, as health secretary, Staff  Report, Nov. 15, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday announced that he has selected Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services, the sprawling agency responsible for administering millions of Americans’ health insurance, approving drugs and medical supplies, regulating food and responding to infectious-disease outbreaks.

Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, is the latest Trump selection for his Cabinet who could face a contentious Senate confirmation.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump’s picks for his Cabinet and administration so far, Staff  Report, Nov. 15, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Donald Trump has already trump 2024named several people to top positions in his administration. His picks include Pete Hegseth, a combat veteran and Fox News host, for defense secretary and Kristi L. Noem (R), the South Dakota governor, for homeland security secretary.

See all the people Trump has named to his incoming administration or the top contenders for unfilled roles based on our reporting with our tracker.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Says Musk and Ramaswamy Will Lead ‘Dept. of Government Efficiency,’ Michael D. Shear and Eric Lipton, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump said Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would oversee the department, which does not currently exist. The announcement left a lot unanswered.

How do you slash, cut, restructure and even dismantle parts of the federal government?

elon musk 2015If you’re President-elect Donald J. Trump, you turn to two wealthy entrepreneurs: the spaceship-inventing, electric-car-building owner of a social media platform and a moneymaking former pharmaceutical executive who was once one of your presidential rivals.

trump 2024Mr. Trump said on Tuesday that Elon Musk, shown at left in a 2015 photo, and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead what he called the Department of Government Efficiency. It will be, he said, “the Manhattan Project” of this era, driving “drastic change” throughout the government with major cuts and new efficiencies in bloated agencies in the federal bureaucracy by July 4, 2026.

“A smaller Government, with more efficiency and less bureaucracy, will be the perfect gift to America on the 250th Anniversary of The Declaration of Independence,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement. “I am confident they will succeed!”

The statement left unanswered all kinds of major questions about an initiative that is uncertain in seriousness but potentially vast in scope. For starters, the president-elect did not address the fact that no such department exists. And he did not elaborate on whether his two rich supporters would hire a staff for the new department, which he said is aimed in part at reducing the federal work force.

Mr. Musk, who became one of Mr. Trump’s biggest campaign contributors, said before the election that he would help the president-elect cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. But he did not explain in any detail how that would be accomplished or what parts of the government would be slashed.

“This will send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!” Mr. Musk said in the statement.

space x logoThe statement by Mr. Trump also did not address how Mr. Musk in particular would handle this task, without creating conflicts of interest, given that SpaceX has secured more than $10 billion worth of federal contracts over the last decade.

SpaceX, Tesla and other companies Mr. Musk created, such as Neuralink, which is manufacturing computer chips that are implanted in the brain, have also been targeted recently in at least 20 different investigations or lawsuits by federal agencies. That means Mr. Musk will somehow be watching over agencies that police his companies.

Mr. Trump’s statement said only that this new department would “provide advice and guidance from outside of government,” suggesting that Mr. Musk will not take a formal role as a federal official.

Slashing government regulations and spending became a top priority for Mr. Musk as his frustrations have grown, particularly this year, with what he considers excessive or redundant oversight by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Interior Department, as SpaceX sought launch licenses to continue testing its newest rocket called Starship.

SpaceX’s Texas launch site is set up next to a national wildlife refuge and state park, requiring detailed environmental reviews before launches, a process that has infuriated Mr. Musk, slowing his plans to take humans to Mars.

The name of the new department — DOGE — appeared to be a play on another one of Mr. Musk’s many investments: the cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which the billionaire regularly promotes to others.

matt gaetz djt resized amazon public images rally

ny times logoNew York Times, Matt Gaetz Is Trump’s Pick for Attorney General, Glenn Thrush and Devlin Barrett, Nov. 14, 2024 (print ed.).  President-elect Donald J. Trump has made clear his view of the Justice Department’s importance and has complained that his past attorneys general fell far short of his expectations.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday named Matt Gaetz, shown above right, the firebrand Republican from Florida, as his attorney general — Justice Department log circulara stunning and provocative move that puts a fierce partisan in position to execute Mr. Trump’s vow to exact retribution on Justice Department officials who prosecuted him.

Mr. Gaetz, 42, was himself the subject of a federal sex trafficking investigation that was concluded in 2023 when the Biden Justice Department declined to bring charges.

trump 2024The Trump administration has long signaled its view of the Justice Department’s importance to its priorities, with Vice President-elect JD Vance calling the attorney general’s job the second-most critical in government.

Mr. Trump has complained that his past attorneys general fell far short of his expectations, setting an ambitious agenda for the Justice Department in his second term and indicating an interest in an appointee receptive to breaking the norm of keeping politics out of the justice system.

Politico, Gaetz resigns from Congress — possibly skirting long-awaited Ethics report, Olivia Beavers and Jordain Carney, Nov. 14, 2024 (print ed.). His resignation came the same day Donald Trump nominated him to be attorney general, but some Republicans think he had other motivations.Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) departs a vote at the U.S. Capitol.

politico CustomGOP Rep. Matt Gaetz resigned from the House Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson announced, the same day that Donald Trump announced that he had tapped the Florida firebrand to be his attorney general.

“He issued his resignation letter effective immediately from Congress. That caught us by surprise a little bit,” Johnson told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday night.

Justice Department log circularDozens of GOP lawmakers indicated that leadership had told them about Gaetz’s resignation before Johnson made the announcement. Many were excitedly spreading the news, glad to be rid of the architect of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership ouster. Gaetz didn’t attend the GOP’s hours-long meeting near the Capitol on Wednesday, where Republicans elected their leadership slate.

Johnson said Gaetz had resigned so abruptly because he knew how long it would take to fill the seat if he becomes attorney general. Johnson said he reached out to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday and added that because of Gaetz’s early resignation it’s possible they could fill his seat as soon as Jan. 3, when the chamber is slated to elect a speaker.

DeSantis’ office did not have an immediate response to questions about when the governor would schedule a special election. But deadlines in state and federal law would make it difficult to schedule one before Congress convenes in January.

Other GOP House colleagues believe his decision is actually tied to an Ethics Committee report investigating several allegations including that Gaetz engaged in sex with a minor, which they believe was poised to be released in a matter of days. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has sought to attack the panel probing various allegations against him. If Gaetz is no longer a member of the House, the report likely won’t be formally released, though it could leak.

One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, tied Gaetz’s resignation to trying to “stymie the ethics investigation that is coming out in one week.”

Gaetz, his spokesperson and a senior aide did not respond to requests for comment about the decision.

Republican senators have already expressed doubts that Gaetz could get confirmed as attorney general, as the pick gets fierce pushback across the party. And even some of his House colleagues were quick to predict that Gaetz wouldn’t be able to get confirmed.

“I don’t think Matt cares if he gets confirmed — everybody is talking about him … so for Matt this is a win,” said Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), who added that Gaetz “ran around here last term like a six year old with a loaded revolver and a happy trigger finger.”

Ethics Chair Michael Guest (R-Miss.) told reporters ahead of Gaetz’s announced resignation that the probe would end if Gaetz was no longer a member of the House.

tulsi gabbard october debate screenshot Custom

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump picks Gabbard to be national intelligence director, Patrick Svitek, Nov. 13, 2024.  President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday he would nominate Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence, giving the job to a former Democratic congresswoman who turned into an enthusiastic supporter of his.

“For over two decades, Tulsi has fought for our Country and the Freedoms of all Americans,” Trump said in a statement, nodding to her background in the military. “I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength.”

Gabbard served as a Democrat in the House representing Hawaii from 2013-2021, and she unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. But she began drifting away from the party afterward and endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign in August. He later named her to his transition team.

trump 2024Gabbard has been an outspoken critic of U.S. military interventions overseas, opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine for its war against Russia. Trump has also voiced skepticism of further Ukrainian aid and ran for president promising to help end the war.

Trump indicated he thinks Gabbard’s history as a Democrat could help her win Senate confirmation, but she is likely to face tough questions from members of both parties over her unorthodox foreign policy views.

“As a former Candidate for the Democrat Presidential Nomination, she has broad support in both Parties — She is now a proud Republican!” Trump said.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Picks Pete Hegseth, a Veteran and Fox News Host, for Defense Secretary, Helene Cooper and Maggie Haberman, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The choice of Mr. Hegseth, a dedicated supporter of Donald Trump in his first term, is outside the norm of the traditional choice for the post.

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday chose Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be his next defense secretary, elevating a television ally to run the Pentagon and lead 1.3 million active-duty troops.

The choice of Mr. Hegseth was outside the norm of the traditional defense secretary. But he was a dedicated supporter of Mr. Trump during his first term, defending his interactions with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, embracing his “America First” agenda of trying to withdraw U.S. troops from abroad and energetically taking up the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes.

trump 2024In a statement announcing his pick, Mr. Trump praised Mr. Hegseth’s combat experience and support of the military and veterans. “Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First,” Mr. Trump said. “With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice — our military will be great again, and America will never back down.”

Mr. Hegseth is a co-host of “Fox & Friends.” He joined the network as a contributor in 2014 and has been the host of Fox’s New Year’s coverage for years.

He served in the Army in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

ny times logoNew York Times, Kristi Noem Is Selected for Homeland Security Secretary, Hamed Aleaziz, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Ms. Noem, the governor of South Dakota, would play a major role in carrying out the president-elect’s promises to crack down on the border and deport millions of people.

President-elect Donald J. Trump selected Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota on Tuesday to run the Homeland Security Department, a critical position in charge of the nation’s immigration system.

Mr. Trump has made an immigration crackdown a central element of his administration’s promises, with pledges to not only more aggressively police the border but to also carry out a wide-scale deportation operation throughout the country.

trump 2024Ms. Noem will play a crucial role in helping Mr. Trump deliver on those promises as she will be in charge of agencies that enforce immigration laws, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

In a statement on social media, Mr. Trump called Ms. Noem “very strong on Border Security,” noting that she sent National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border as governor. Ms. Noem, in her own social media statement, pledged to “secure the border and restore safety to American communities so families will again have the opportunity to pursue the American Dream.”

If she is confirmed by the Senate, Ms. Noem will lead an agency that oversees entities including the Coast Guard and the Secret Service, which has weathered criticism over two attempts on Mr. Trump’s life during the presidential campaign.

History suggests it will be challenging to keep Mr. Trump satisfied: During his first term, Mr. Trump cycled through six homeland security leaders.

During her time as governor, Ms. Noem has made immigration a key talking point. She has been a fierce critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

ny times logoNew York Times, John Ratcliffe, Former Intelligence Director, Is Chosen to Lead C.I.A., Michael D. Shear and Julian E. Barnes, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Ratcliffe, who was also a Texas congressman, fought fiercely for Donald Trump during his first term.

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Tuesday that his nominee to lead the C.I.A. would be John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman who served as the director of national intelligence during Mr. Trump’s first term.

trump 2024Mr. Trump called Mr. Ratcliffe a “warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American Public” on his social media account. As the national intelligence director, Mr. Ratcliffe served as the president’s chief adviser on intelligence issues.

As a congressman, Mr. Ratcliffe fought on Mr. Trump’s behalf, helping to pursue investigations into Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and repeatedly criticizing the investigations into ties between Russia and Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Mr. Ratcliffe’s selection adds to the string of fierce Trump loyalists chosen so far for senior positions in the president-elect’s administration. But while Mr. Ratcliffe firmly backed Mr. Trump’s agenda as the director of national intelligence, he did not accede to every demand Mr. Trump made, something that could aid him as the Senate debates his confirmation.

His confirmation would most likely make Mr. Ratcliffe the most influential voice on intelligence matters in the next administration. Nominally, the C.I.A. director is subordinate to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. But the C.I.A. director, with the power to appoint the senior spies stationed overseas and to conduct covert operations, arguably has more influence, and Mr. Trump has long viewed the C.I.A. job as more important.

ny times logoNew York Times, Senate G.O.P. Picks John Thune as Leader, Ignoring Push by Trump Allies, Luke Broadwater and Carl Hulse, Nov. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Senator John Thune of South Dakota will succeed Senator Mitch McConnell as the G.O.P. leader.

President Biden hosted President-elect Trump at the White House. Republicans on Wednesday elected Senator John Thune of South Dakota, their No. 2 in the chamber, to serve as majority leader in the next Congress, choosing a G.O.P. institutionalist to replace Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate’s longest-serving leader.

In elevating Mr. Thune, 63, G.O.P. senators turned to a traditional Republican in the mold of Mr. McConnell, and rejected a challenger more aligned with President-elect Donald J. Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

In a closed-door vote conducted by secret ballot, Mr. Thune emerged victorious by a vote of 29 to 24 over Senator John Cornyn of Texas, another well-respected establishment Republican, according to two people familiar with the vote. Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who pitched himself as the Trump candidate in the race and had been supported by right-wing allies of the president-elect, was forced out of the contest in an earlier round of voting after drawing just 13 supporters, well behind Mr. Thune and Mr. Cornyn, they said.

After Mr. Thune had won, Mr. Cornyn called for him to ascend to the leader position through acclamation — or without objection or dissent — a move that signaled the Senate would retain some of its civility in the raucous world of the MAGA movement.

Roll Call, House will remain Republican in 2025, narrowly, Mary Ellen McIntire, Nov. 14, 2024 (print ed.). GOP secures trifecta of Washington control.

Republicans will maintain control of the House next year, a result made clear when The Associated Press called a 217th seat for Republicans, a Democrat conceded a key race loss and House Democratic leaders threw in the towel.

“House Democrats gave it our all, running aggressive, forward-looking and people-centered campaigns. While we will not regain control of the Congress in January, falling just a few seats short, House Democrats will hold Republicans to a razor-thin majority. That is unprecedented in a so-called presidential wave election,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a Wednesday evening statement.

Earlier in the day, the AP called the race in California’s 41st District for Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, putting the GOP at 217 seats. Democrat Kirsten Engel also conceded her race challenging GOP Rep. Juan Ciscomani in Arizona’s 6th District. “The voters have made their decision and we must respect it — I will not be the next Representative for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District,” Engel said in a post on the social media platform X.

That, and the trend lines in the remaining uncalled races, was enough to call the House majority eight days after Election Day.

With the House majority secured, the GOP officially wins the trifecta in Washington: control of the White House, Senate and House, although House Republican leaders have been forecasting their win for several days now. Come January, the party is expected to begin an aggressive legislative agenda encompassing tax, immigration and energy policies.

Outstanding race calls will determine for sure how large their majority will be, but it appears the party will have a narrow majority that could complicate their efforts to enact President-elect Donald Trump’s agenda.

When Trump first took office in 2017, Republicans had a 23-seat majority and could lose more votes on major votes. Their margin next year could shrink even more as GOP Reps. Elise Stefanik of New York and Michael Waltz and Matt Gaetz of Florida have been tapped to join the Trump administration. The vacancies they create could make it more difficult for Republicans to pass legislation until they are filled.

Even so, Trump is poised to have far more allies in the House come January compared to the outset of his first term. Many of the House lawmakers who opposed Trump have either retired or been voted out of office.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Middle East Picks Signal Staunch Pro-Israel Policy, Lara Jakes and Adam Rasgon, Nov. 14, 2024 (print ed.). Mike Huckabee and Steven Witkoff have both made pro-Israel statements. Here’s a look at the men who will help shape President-elect Trump’s strategy.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s nominees to serve as top diplomatic envoys to Israel and the Middle East have little, if any, official policy experience in the region. But there is not much question about where their sympathies lie.

trump 2024Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas who was tapped on Tuesday to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel, has said that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian” and argued that all of the West Bank belonged to Israel.

His selection, which requires Senate confirmation, was widely welcomed by Israeli officials who oppose a Palestinian state, a longstanding U.S. goal.

Steven Witkoff, who was named on Tuesday as the incoming administration’s Middle East envoy, raised a vast amount of money for Mr. Trump’s campaign — including from Jewish voters after the Biden administration stopped shipping some bombs to Israel.

Mr. Trump has presented himself as Israel’s strongest ally, and analysts believe he is likely to make U.S. foreign policy more favorable to Israel. “These appointments are all Palestinians should need to understand what is coming their way,” said Nour Odeh, a Palestinian political analyst.

ny times logoNew York Times, Israeli Court Rejects Netanyahu’s Bid to Delay Corruption Trial Testimony, Isabel Kershner, Nov. 14, 2024 (print ed.). The court ruled that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must take the stand on Dec. 2 in a trial that has stretched out for more than four years.

An Israeli court on Wednesday rejected a new request by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to delay testifying at his corruption trial, ruling that he must take the stand next month even as the country is at war in Gaza and Lebanon.

Benjamin Netanyahu smile TwitterThe spectacle of a sitting prime minister defending himself against graft charges is likely to further polarize Israelis, and Mr. Netanyahu’s legal troubles have long split the country. His supporters claim that a liberal deep state is trying to oust him by judicial means after failing to do so at the ballot box, and his opponents have called on him to resign, with some accusing him of prolonging the fighting and the case to keep himself in power and out of jail.

Mr. Netanyahu is battling charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust in three separate but interrelated cases being heard in parallel at the Jerusalem District Court. He has denied any wrongdoing in the cases, which center on accusations that he arranged favors for tycoons in exchange for gifts and sympathetic media coverage for himself and his family.

The trial has stretched on since 2020 as the court has made its way through a list of more than 300 witnesses.

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: Trump’s Demand to Skirt Senate Confirmations Tests His Push for Power, Charlie Savage, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump is pushing Republicans to systematically abdicate the Senate’s constitutional role in vetting his nominees.

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s demand that Senate Republicans surrender their role in vetting his nominees poses an early test of whether his second term will be more radical than his first.

Over the weekend, Mr. Trump insisted on social media that Republicans select a new Senate majority leader willing to call recesses during which he could unilaterally appoint personnel, a process that would allow him to sidestep the confirmation process. His allies immediately applauded the idea, intensifying pressure on G.O.P. lawmakers to acquiesce.

The demand to weaken checks and balances and take for himself some of the legislative branch’s usual power underscored Mr. Trump’s authoritarian impulses. While there is no obvious legal obstacle to Mr. Trump’s request, it would be an extraordinary violation of constitutional norms. There is no historical precedent for a deliberate and wholesale abandonment by the Senate of its function of deciding whether to confirm or reject the president’s choices to bestow with government power.

Ed Whelan, a legal commentator who has supported Mr. Trump’s judicial nominees but been critical of Mr. Trump himself, sounded the alarm on Tuesday in an essay for the conservative National Review. The once and future president appeared to be contemplating “an awful and anti-constitutional idea,” he wrote.

Recess appointees who take office without Senate confirmation wield the full powers of their offices until the end of the next Senate session. Each congressional session typically lasts a year, so anyone who receives a recess appointment from Mr. Trump in early 2025 could remain in office until the end of 2026.

The Constitution normally requires the president to obtain the Senate’s consent to appoint top officials to the executive branch, in part to prevent the White House from installing unfit people to high office.

But in the early days of the country, when travel was by horse, the Senate was regularly out of session for months at a time and could not be readily recalled when a key vacancy arose and the country needed someone to fill it. As a result, the founders also wrote an exception into the Constitution, allowing presidents to temporarily fill vacancies without Senate confirmation when it was in recess.

The recess appointment clause is an anachronism in the modern era, since the Senate meets throughout the year and can easily reconvene when necessary. But even though the clause’s original purpose is obsolete, it remains part of the Constitution.

Commentaries On Trump Team

Letters From An American, Historical Analysis: November 13 [Danger of Certain Key Nominees], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Nov 14, 2024. Republican senators today elected John Thune of South Dakota (below left) to be the next Senate majority leader.

Trump and MAGA Republicans had put a great deal of heather cox richardson cnnpressure on the senators to back Florida senator Rick Scott, but he marshaled fewer votes than either Thune or John Cornyn of Texas, both of whom were seen as establishment figures in the mold of the Republican senators’ current leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

john thune o CustomScott lost on the first vote. The fact that the vote was secret likely helped Thune’s candidacy. Senators could vote without fear of retaliation.

The rift between the pre-2016 leaders of the Republican Party and the MAGA Republicans is still obvious, and Trump’s reliance on Elon Musk and his stated goal of deconstructing the American government could make it wider.

Republican establishment leaders have always wanted to dismantle the New Deal state that began under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and continued under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower and presidents of both parties until 1981. But they have never wanted to dismantle the rule of law on which the United States is founded or the international rules-based order on which foreign trade depends. Aside from moral and intellectual principles, the rule of law is the foundation on which the security of property rests: there is a reason that foreign oligarchs park their money in democracies. And it is the international rules-based order that protects the freedom of the seas on which the movement of container ships, for example, depends.

Trump has made it clear that his goal for a second term is to toss overboard the rule of law and the international rules-based order, instead turning the U.S. government into a vehicle for his own revenge and forging individual alliances with autocratic rulers like Russian president Vladimir Putin.

He has begun moving to put into power individuals whose qualifications are their willingness to do as Trump demands, like New York representative marco rubio newerElise Stefanik, whom he has tapped to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, or Florida senator Marco Rubio, right, who Trump said today would be his nominee for secretary of state.

Alongside his choice of loyalists who will do as he says, Trump has also tapped people who will push his war on his cultural enemies forward, like anti-immigrant ideologue Stephen Miller, who will become his deputy chief of staff and a homeland security advisor. Today, Trump added to that list by saying he plans to nominate Florida representative Matt Gaetz, who has been an attack dog for Trump, to become attorney general.

Trump’s statement tapping Gaetz for attorney general came after Senate Republicans rejected Scott, and appears to be a deliberate challenge to Republican senators that they get in line. In his announcement, Trump highlighted that Gaetz had played “a key role in defeating the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax.”

But establishment Republican leaders understand that some of our core institutions cannot survive MAGA’s desire to turn the government into a vehicle for culture war vengeance.

Gaetz is a deeply problematic pick for AG. A report from the House Ethics Committee investigating allegations of drug use and sex with a minor was due to be released in days. Although he was reelected just last week, Gaetz resigned immediately after Trump said he would nominate him, thus short-circuiting the release of the report. Last year, Republican senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told CNN that “we had all seen the videos he was showing on the House floor, that all of us had walked away, of the girls that he had slept with. He would brag about how he would crush [erectile dysfunction] medicine and chase it with an energy drink so he could go all night.”

While South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham said he would be willing to agree to the appointment, other Republican senators drew a line. “I was shocked by the announcement —that shows why the advise and consent process is so important,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said. “I’m sure that there will be a lot of questions raised at his hearing.” Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) was blunt: “I don’t think he’s a serious candidate.”

If the idea of putting Gaetz in charge of the country’s laws alarmed Republicans concerned about domestic affairs, Trump’s pick of the inexperienced and extremist Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth to take over the Department of Defense was a clarion call for anyone concerned about perpetuating the global strength of the U.S. The secretary of defense oversees a budget of more than $800 billion and about 1.3 million active-duty troops, with another 1.4 million in the National Guard and employed in Reserves and civilian positions.

The secretary of defense also has access to the nuclear command-and-control procedure. Over his nomination, too, Republican senators expressed concern.

While Trump is claiming a mandate to do as he wishes with the government, Republicans interested in their own political future are likely noting that he actually won the election by a smaller margin than President Joe Biden won in 2020, despite a global rejection of incumbents this year. And he won not by picking up large numbers of new voters—it appears he lost voters—but because Democratic voters of color dropped out, perhaps reflecting the new voter suppression laws put into place since 2021.

Then, too, Trump remains old and mentally slipping, and he is increasingly isolated as people fight over the power he has brought within their grasp. Today his wife, Melania, declined the traditional invitation from First Lady Jill Biden for tea at the White House and suggested she will not be returning to the presidential mansion with her husband. It is not clear either that Trump will be able to control the scrabbling for power over the party by those he has brought into the executive branch, or that he has much to offer elected Republicans who no longer need his voters, suggesting that Congress could reassert its power.

Falling into line behind Trump at this point is not necessarily a good move for a Republican interested in a future political career.

Today the Republicans are projected to take control of the House of Representatives, giving the party control of the House, the Senate, and the presidency, as well as the Supreme Court. But as the downballot races last week show, MAGA policies remain unpopular, and the Republican margin in the House will be small. In the last Congress, MAGA loyalists were unable to get the votes they needed from other Republicans to impose Trump’s culture war policies, creating gridlock and a deeply divided Republican conference.

The gulf between Trump’s promises to slash the government and voters’ actual support for government programs is not going to make the Republicans’ job easier. Conservative pundit George Will wrote today that “the world’s richest person is about to receive a free public education,” suggesting Elon Musk, who has emerged as the shadow president, will find his plans to cut the government difficult to enact as elected officials reject cuts to programs their constituents like.

Musk’s vow to cut “at least” $2 trillion from federal spending, Will notes, will run up against reality in a hurry. Of the $6.75 trillion fiscal 2024 spending, debt service makes up 13.1%; defense—which Trump wants to increase—is 12.9%. Entitlements, primarily Social Security and Medicare, account for 34.6%, and while the Republican Study Group has called for cuts to them, Trump said during the campaign, at least, that they would not be cut.

So Musk has said he would cut about 30% of the total budget from about 40% of it. Will points out that Trump is hardly the first president to vow dramatic cuts. Notably, Ronald Reagan appointed J. Peter Grace, an entrepreneur, to make government “more responsive to the wishes of the people” after voters had elected Reagan on a platform of cutting government. Grace’s commission made 2,478 recommendations but quickly found that every lawmaker liked cuts to someone else’s district but not their own.

Will notes that a possible outcome of the Trump chaos might be to check the modern movement toward executive power, inducing Congress to recapture some of the power it has ceded to the president in order to restore the stability businessmen prefer.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was himself a wealthy man, and in the 1930s he tried to explain to angry critics on the right that his efforts to address the nation’s inequalities were not an attack on American capitalism, but rather an attempt to save it from the communism or fascism that would destroy the rule of law.

“I want to save our system, the capitalistic system,” FDR wrote to a friend in 1935. “[T]o save it is to give some heed to world thought of today.”

The protections of the system FDR ushered in—the banking and equities regulation that killed crony finance, for example—are now under attack by the very sort of movement he warned against. Whether today’s lawmakers are as willing as their predecessors were to stand against that movement remains unclear, especially as Trump tries to bring lawmakers to heel, but Thune’s victory in the Senate today and the widespread Republican outrage over Trump’s appointment of Gaetz and Hegseth are hopeful signs.

The Hartmann Report, Commentary: A Second Reign of Terror: Trump’s Blueprint for ICE Home Raids, Thom Hartmann, Nov. 12, 2024. As Holman returns to ICE, expect a brutal escalation in deportation raids, with few spared…and the rest of us will probably be next.

When Trump was elected, many Americans wondered if we were in for a brutal nationwide reign of terror, or if he’d merely content himself with more tax cuts for billionaires and a repeat of his last term’s personally profitable crony capitalism.

While the mainstream media has treated him (for years) as if he’s just another, albeit quirky, politician, others among us, as Carole Cadwalladr noted at The Power, remember that when Rodrigo Duterte was elected president of the Philippines (whose constitution is modeled after ours) within a mere 6 months he was imprisoning opposition politicians, protesters, and journalists.

Taking down the free press in Germany and imprisoning dissidents and journalists only took Hitler three months, about the same as Mussolini and Pinochet.

America’s rightwing oligarchs are apparently ready for the fun to begin: Elon Musk tweeted last week that it’ll soon be time to use the force of law and the Department of Justice to prosecute the people at The Center for Countering Digital Hate who’ve been relentless in outing Nazis on Xitter. (Musk just lost a lawsuit to them.)

But even though they moved quickly, Hitler, Pinochet, Mussolini, and Duterte didn’t start with journalists; they started with the most marginalized and least powerful people in their nations. For Hitler it was trans people he went after within his first two weeks; for Duterte it was drug addicts.

Pinochet and Mussolini arrested vulnerable working class supporters of their opposition political parties who dared show up in the streets to demonstrate against them.

So, who’s the weakest here in America? While Trump campaigned against trans people (just like Hitler had in 1933), it looks like he has another group in mind for his first genticide.

Trump has his sights on undocumented Black and Hispanic migrants to begin the state-sponsored violence and inure the American public to what will eventually come for many more of us.

Get ready for midnight door-knocks by men with guns starting in January. Particularly if you or anybody in your extended family has a last name that ends with a vowel or a z, or even if you simply have black hair and brown eyes.

Trump and Thomas Holman are on the case.

Earlier Trump Transition Announcements, Analysis

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Is Expected to Name Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Edward Wong, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). President-elect Trump appears to have settled on the Florida senator, who has taken hard-line positions on China, Iran and Venezuela, to be the top U.S. diplomat.

President-elect Donald J. Trump is expected to name Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, right, as his secretary of state, three people familiar with his thinking marco rubio newersaid on Monday, as Mr. Trump moves rapidly to fill out his foreign policy and national security team.

Mr. Trump could still change his mind at the last minute, the people said, but appeared to have settled on Mr. Rubio, whom he also considered when choosing his running mate this year.

Mr. Rubio was elected to the Senate in 2010, and has staked out a position as a foreign policy hawk, taking hard lines on China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba in particular.

He initially found himself at odds with those Republicans who were more skeptical about interventions abroad, but he has also echoed Mr. Trump more recently on issues like Russia’s war against Ukraine, saying that the conflict has reached a stalemate and “needs to be brought to a conclusion.”

Despite speaking in hard-line terms about Russia in the past, Mr. Rubio would likely go along with Mr. Trump’s expected plans to press Ukraine to find a way to come to a settlement with Russia and remain outside of NATO. It is unclear whether the leaders of Ukraine or Russia would be prepared to enter into talks at Mr. Trump’s urging.

Mr. Rubio has been among the most outspoken senators on the need for the United States to be more aggressive on China. He has adopted positions that later became more mainstream in both parties. For example, while serving in Congress during the first Trump administration, he began advocating industrial policy meant to help the United States better compete with China’s state-directed economy.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Allies Push Him to Block Thune From Becoming Senate G.O.P. Leader, Maggie Haberman, Luke Broadwater and Jonathan Swan, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Some of Donald Trump’s closest advisers want him to torpedo a bid by Senator John Thune, a onetime Republican nemesis, to become Senate majority leader.Some of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s closest allies are privately counseling him to try to block a onetime Republican nemesis from becoming the Senate majority leader, pushing him to impose his will more forcefully on an already compliant G.O.P. Congress.

john thune o CustomThose advisers believe Mr. Trump should stop Senator John Thune of South Dakota, right, the No. 2 Republican, from winning the top post, according to people familiar with the talks. One person close to the president-elect noted that he had not weighed in on the race.

Doing so would be an extraordinary move even for Mr. Trump, who during his first term and since he has left office has had an iron grip on congressional Republicans. He has demanded and almost always received loyalty from them on matters of policy and personnel.

Mr. Thune, an establishment Republican who is reviled by some on the MAGA right, is competing for the position against Senators John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida. Republican senators and senators-elect are set to vote by secret ballot on Wednesday.

Intervening in an internal leadership struggle among G.O.P. senators, who have at times been more resistant to the former president’s dictates and where members are fiercely protective of their independence, would signal Mr. Trump’s determination to dominate the legislative branch in his second term. The majority leader controls the Senate floor, including what proposals and nominees receive votes, and when.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Trump Picks His Cabinet, Here Are the Key Advisers Who Have His Ear, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Aides like Susie Wiles and advisers like Elon Musk are weighing in as President-elect Trump shapes his new administration.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has been known to cast a wide net when seeking advice for hiring decisions. As his team ramps up the presidential transition process, Mr. Trump is calling friends and associates for input on who should be part of his administration, which he says will radically reshape the federal government.

But a group of aides and advisers, some of whom worked in the first Trump administration and others who are newcomers, have particular influence as the president-elect starts choosing his cabinet and setting his administration’s agenda.

trump 2024The group of course includes his vice president-elect, JD Vance. Less known are other influential business executives and Republican operatives advising Mr. Trump. Over the weekend, the group began to navigate the ideological differences of the party — and Mr. Trump’s impulses — as they began setting on appointments, including Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, as U.N. ambassador and Thomas D. Homan as border “czar.”

“President-elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second administration soon,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for his presidential transition, said on Sunday. “Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

Here are some of the key people to watch as they bring their influence to bear on steering the next administration:

Elon Musk. After investing more than $100 million in Mr. Trump’s campaign, the billionaire has gained tremendous access to the president-elect. Mr. Musk was around Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club and residence in Florida, last week as the president-elect began his first formal transition meetings.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump handed the phone to Mr. Musk while speaking to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. Mr. Trump has also said he wants Mr. Musk in a role focused on slashing government spending.

In a social media post on Sunday suggesting a willingness to weigh in on a key congressional leadership fight, Mr. Musk backed Senator Rick Scott for majority leader while knocking Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, as a “top choice for Democrats.”

Mr. Musk also has something to gain from Mr. Trump: He is a major government contractor, and the Defense Department relies heavily on his company, SpaceX. Mr. Musk has sought to have some of his employees placed in government jobs.

Susie Wiles. Mr. Trump’s first job announcement after winning the election was naming Ms. Wiles, shown in a 2020 photo, a loyal member of his inner circle, as his chief of susie wiles 2020staff. Ms. Wiles will be the first woman to hold the job and is the only campaign manager to complete an campaign cycle working for Mr. Trump.

Ms. Wiles, a political strategist from Florida, gained the respect of leaders in the MAGA movement while maintaining relationships in the old-guard Republican establishment. She worked on one of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns and in his White House. In recent years, she helped Mr. Scott win his Senate seat in Florida and worked with Ron DeSantis when he won the Florida governor’s race in 2018.

As Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Ms. Wiles will take the lead on driving his agenda.

Howard Lutnick. Mr. Lutnick, the billionaire chief executive of the Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, is one of the names being floated as the next Treasury secretary. But as a co-chair of Mr. Trump’s transition team, Mr. Lutnick has already taken on the high-profile assignment of identifying 4,000 hires for the new administration.

Mr. Lutnick, who also spent time at Mar-a-Lago the day after the election, has been fielding input from Republican donors and executives for potential hires. He has sought advice from major financial leaders like Stephen A. Schwarzman, the billionaire chief executive of the Blackstone Group, and the brokerage firm founder Charles Schwab.

“We’ve got so many candidates,” Mr. Lutnick said of referrals for the Trump administration during a CNN interview on Oct. 31. “We are so set up — I feel great.”

Mr. Lutnick was a longtime registered Democrat, but he said the party had moved away from his interests and he was now a Republican.

His role in staffing the new administration has generated concern among ethics watch dogs. Mr. Lutnick continues to run firms that serve corporate clients, traders, cryptocurrency platforms and real estate ventures around the world, which are regulated by agencies whose appointees he is helping to identify.

Stephen Miller. Mr. Miller was the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda during his first administration and remains close to the president-elect. He has plans for an even more extreme crackdown on immigration.

A former policy aide and speechwriter, Mr. Miller is planning what Mr. Trump calls “the largest deportation program in American history” by using the military and local law enforcement to assist federal immigration officers. Mr. Miller will play a key role in choosing those who will fill roles relating to immigration policy.

He will work closely with Mr. Homan, Mr. Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Mr. Homan was one of the officials who endorsed Mr. Trump’s “zero-tolerance policy” at the border that led to the separation of thousands of migrant families. He told “60 Minutes” last month that the new Trump administration would begin large-scale work site raids that could lead to the arrest of unauthorized workers.

During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Miller helped lead a purge of senior homeland security officials whom he and Mr. Trump did not view as effectively carrying out the administration’s immigration policies. Mr. Miller is now one of Mr. Trump’s aides evaluating conservative lawyers who could implement Mr. Trump’s policies.

Steve Witkoff. Mr. Witkoff, a real estate developer and golf partner to the president-elect, was a donor to Mr. Trump’s political action committee. He also testified at the former president’s civil fraud trial this year and was playing golf with Mr. Trump at Mar-a-Lago during the second assassination attempt of the presidential campaign.

kelly loeffler o CustomMr. Witkoff helped connect Mr. Trump to the entrepreneurs leading his latest cryptocurrency venture. The president-elect announced on Saturday that Mr. Witkoff would be the chairman of his inaugural committee alongside Kelly Loeffler, right, the former Georgia senator.

Mr. Trump’s first inaugural committee received scrutiny over its spending. The Trump family business and his 2017 inauguration committee jointly agreed to pay $750,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by the attorney general for the District of Columbia, who claimed that the Trump International Hotel in Washington had illegally received excessive payments from the committee.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump win means ‘time has come’ to annex parts of West Bank, Israeli minister says, Staff Report, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Israel’s fight against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon is set to dominate the agenda at gatherings in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and the White House this week.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich welcomed President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory Monday, saying that “the time has come” to extend full Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank.

He made the comment a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a recorded statement that he has spoken three times with Trump since the election and that they “see eye to eye on the Iranian threat.”

Israel’s conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon are set to dominate meetings in the Middle East and at the White House this week, after deadly Israeli airstrikes over the weekend highlighted the increasingly brutal toll.

On Monday, top officials from Arab and Islamic countries are meeting for a summit in Saudi Arabia’s capital, Riyadh, to “discuss the continued Israeli aggression on the Palestinian territories and the Lebanese Republic, and the current developments in the region,” according to Saudi state media.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog is scheduled to meet with President Joe Biden at the White House on Tuesday, although it is not clear how much influence the Biden administration has over Israel after Trump’s presidential election victory.

steve schmidt logo horizontal

The Warning with Steve Schmidt, Less than a week after becoming president-elect, Donald Trump has already begun to fulfill his most fascistic campaign promises, Steve Schmidt breaks down Trump’s early actions before he’s even been sworn in, Nov. 11, 2024.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Offers Elise Stefanik Role as U.N. Ambassador, Maggie Haberman, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). In one of his first cabinet-level personnel decisions, the president-elect has chosen the Republican member of Congress from New York to represent the United States at the United Nations.

President-elect Donald J. Trump has offered Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, the role of U.N. ambassador in his upcoming administration.

Ms. Stefanik, who represents an upstate New York district in the House and is a member of the Republican leadership in the chamber, has been a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump. His decision to name her to the post was reported earlier by CNN.

Ms. Stefanik has accepted the offer, her office said.

washington post logoWashington Post, Rep. Michael Waltz asked to be Trump’s national security adviser, Patrick Svitek, Azi Paybarah and Mariana Alfaro, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Waltz has been a critic of Biden’s foreign policy and is among the GOP lawmakers who have voiced skepticism about the amount of michael waltz wassistance Washington has provided Ukraine.

Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Florida), right, a retired Special Forces officer, has been asked to serve as national security adviser, according to two people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

ICE logo

ny times logoNew York Times, Donald Trump Names Former Immigration Official as His ‘Border Czar,’ Mike Ives, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Homan, a senior immigration official in the last Trump administration, has said that workplace raids would restart under the new government.

President-elect Donald J. Trump said late Sunday that he had named Thomas D. Homan, left, a senior immigration official in his last administration, as the “border czar” in charge of the nation’s borders and its maritime and aviation security.

thomas tom homanMr. Trump made the announcement in a brief post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that did not provide other details on Mr. Homan’s new job.

“I’ve known Tom for a long time, and there is nobody better at policing and controlling our Borders,” Mr. Trump wrote in the post. “Likewise, Tom Homan will be in charge of all Deportation of Illegal Aliens back to their Country of Origin.”

trump 2024Mr. Trump made a broad crackdown on immigration a pillar of his presidential campaign, but it is so far unclear what that would look like or what his presidency will mean for immigrants in the United States.

One major question is whether the new administration will implement large-scale worksite raids that could lead to the arrest of unauthorized workers. Mr. Homan said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last month that such raids, which have not been conducted under President Biden, would resume under the new administration. Mr. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

Mr. Homan was named acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2017, and he has decades of experience in immigration enforcement. He was a police officer, a United States Border Patrol agent and a special agent with the former Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Mr. Trump’s announcement on Sunday was the latest clue into who will — and won’t — be his cabinet members and closest advisers. On Thursday, Mr. Trump named Susie Wiles, who has run his political operation, as his White House chief of staff. On Saturday he said that he would not invite Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the United Nations, or Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, to join the new administration.

stephen miller white house screenshot

ny times logoNew York Times, Immigration Hard-Liner Stephen Miller Poised to Get Key White House Role, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The adviser and speechwriter, above, who has been with Donald Trump since his first term in 2016, is expected to be named deputy chief of staff.

Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner and adviser to President-elect Donald J. Trump, is taking over policy planning for the transition and is expected to be named deputy chief of staff in the incoming administration, according to people briefed on the matter.

It remains to be seen how broad Mr. Miller’s portfolio will be, but it is expected to be vast and to far exceed what the eventual title will convey, according to the people briefed on the matter.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mr. Miller also did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Mr. Miller’s views are favored by Mr. Trump’s hard-line base. Vice President-elect JD Vance and Donald Trump Jr., who has been influential in the transition, praised the prospective choice on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.

The expected move was reported earlier by CNN.

trump 2024Mr. Miller was an influential aide in Mr. Trump’s first term, and has remained a key adviser and speechwriter. He has been involved in Mr. Trump’s early transition planning meetings since their election victory last Tuesday, and Mr. Miller is expected to play a key role in staffing the government — especially regarding roles that intersect with immigration policy.

While many former Trump aides made themselves scarce after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, Mr. Miller stayed close to Mr. Trump immediately after he left office. He advised his team on messaging and policy and formed his own nonprofit group, America First Legal Foundation, to battle the Biden administration in the courts. He has been a frequent presence on Fox News defending Mr. Trump.

Mr. Miller traveled with Mr. Trump during the campaign and encouraged Mr. Trump’s instincts to elevate immigration as the top issue in the closing weeks of the race.

Over the past two years, Mr. Miller has also been working on detailed plans for mass deportations. He outlined these and other hard-line immigration policies in an interview with The New York Times last year. The plans include restricting legal and illegal immigration in a number of ways, including rounding up undocumented immigrants already in the United States and detaining them in camps before they’re expelled from the country.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Why Trump’s Deportations Will Drive Up Your Grocery Bill, Paul Krugman, right, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). For the past few years, over and over, paul krugmanvoters have told pollsters and pundits that they’re hopping mad about inflation.

Well, we just elected a president who, if he follows through on two of his central campaign promises — across-the-board tariffs and mass deportation of undocumented immigrants — will probably cause soaring inflation.

How will voters react?

I’ve written about the likely inflationary impact of Donald Trump’s policies. All of that still stands. But there’s an issue that I haven’t stressed as much as I probably should have: the specific effects of his proposed deportations on grocery and housing prices, both of which have been political flashpoints.

trump 2024First, a word about deficits to set the stage: The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Trump’s tax plans would add almost $8 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Trump has claimed that he can make up for tax cuts with revenue from tariffs and huge cuts in government spending, but those claims are wildly unrealistic.

Politico, Many in government are worried about Trump’s return. At DOJ, they’re terrified, Josh Gerstein, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.). Trump blames DOJ for much of his torment over the past four years. Lawyers there fear what’s next.

A collective sense of dread has taken hold at the Department of Justice, which drew Donald Trump’s rage like no other part of the federal government during his campaign.

politico CustomSome career attorneys at DOJ are already considering heading for the exits rather than sticking around to find out whether threats from Trump and his allies are real or campaign bluster. Those threats range from mass firings of “deep state” lawyers to expelling special counsel Jack Smith from the country.

“Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds,” said one DOJ attorney, who like most of the people interviewed for this article was granted anonymity to speak freely about colleagues and avoid retribution from the president-elect and his allies. “The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”

Justice Department log circularWhile alarm over Trump’s return is widespread throughout the federal bureaucracy, it is perhaps most acute at the Justice Department, which was at the center of many of the major controversies of his first term.

Most of the department’s 115,000 employees were around for those controversies. Critics believed the Trump White House meddled in some of the department’s high-profile prosecutions. Both of Trump’s attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William Barr, shown below, eventually lost the president’s confidence. And his first term ended with a stunning showdown between Trump and nearly all of his DOJ appointees as they resisted his attempts to cling to power.

william barr at dojBut department veterans say those events pale in comparison to what they expect when Trump gets a second chance to try to remake the DOJ in his vision. They also know Trump’s anger at the department has only deepened in the past four years as it launched two unprecedented criminal prosecutions against him.

“Many federal employees are terrified that we’ll be replaced with partisan loyalists — not just because our jobs are on the line, but because we know that our democracy and country depend on a government supported by a merit-based, apolitical civil service,” said Stacey Young, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who won an award from Barr in 2020 and is president and co-founder of the DOJ Gender Equality Network.

It all adds up to a feeling of trepidation for many of the department’s rank and file.

jack smith 6 9 2023 at podium

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump allies push to punish Jack Smith in first test of retribution vow, Isaac Arnsdorf, Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov.  9, 2024 (print ed.). Even as Jack Smith, shown above, took steps to wind down his Jan. 6 election interference case against Trump, Elon Musk said the special counsel “cannot go unpunished.”

Even as Jack Smith moved to wind down his federal election interference case against Donald Trump on Friday, House Republicans took an initial step toward investigating the special counsel, setting up an early test of how the president-elect’s calls for retribution will play out.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia) asked Smith’s office to preserve all records of the historic classified document and election interference probes, a routine first step in congressional inquiries, law enforcement investigations and litigation. Elon Musk, the X owner who spent more than $100 million boosting Trump’s campaign, responded to the House Republicans’ letter by posting, “Jack Smith’s abuse of the justice system cannot go unpunished.”

Trump vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail to stop Smith’s prosecutions and use a return to power to turn federal law enforcement against President Joe Biden and other critics, Democrats and former advisers. He argued without evidence that the federal indictments he faced were politically motivated. In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump said he would quickly remove Smith and suggested deporting him.

“He should be thrown out of the country,” Trump said Oct. 24 on “Cats & Cosby,” a conservative radio talk show..

A Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the thinking of the president-elect and his team, said Trump and his team would react extremely poorly if Smith tries to do anything else publicly. The next Justice Department will look “critically” at what Smith’s team did over the past couple of years to “make sure nothing like this ever happens again,” the person said.

The adviser said that Trump has shown a particular interest in who becomes attorney general because of the cases, and he wants “vindication” on all of them. The person said that it would be unlikely a Trump Justice Department would want to employ prosecutors from Smith’s office who investigated Trump.

Smith’s team included veteran national security prosecutors who had spent years at the Justice Department. They secured grand jury indictments charging Trump with hoarding classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, and illegally trying to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory.

trump 2024Since this week’s election, Smith has signaled that he plans to wind down the cases against Trump and focus on completing a final report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, rather than pushing ahead with the prosecutions until the inauguration and forcing a confrontation with the incoming administration.

Smith is assessing how he wants to proceed with the case now that Trump is expected to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, the special counsel and his team told a federal judge in a filing Friday. Justice Department policy would not allow for the prosecution of a sitting president. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan responded by granting Smith’s request to suspend all remaining deadlines in the case Friday.

Jordan and Loudermilk’s letter to Smith suggested that Smith’s office might respond to the election by purging records, warning, “The Office of Special Counsel is not immune from transparency or above accountability for its actions.” The lawmakers, both staunch Trump supporters, repeated an earlier request for Smith to turn over records about his communications with Garland, his hiring decisions and the court-approved search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.

Trump’s attorneys have criticized Smith’s prosecutions as unjustified and political in legal filings, but have not alleged that he committed a crime.

Politico, Lawyer linked to Trump’s transition defends Trump’s right to dictate Justice Department actions, Josh Gerstein, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.). GOP attorney Mark Paoletta says history and law support any president’s authority to start or stop criminal probes.

politico CustomA prominent Washington lawyer involved in President-elect Donald Trump’s planning for the Justice Department is defending Trump’s right to dictate who gets investigated and perhaps even who gets charged by the law enforcement agency.

Mark Paoletta, who served as legal counsel to Vice President Mike Pence and later to the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump administration, argued Thursday there’s no legal requirement for any president to stay out of Justice Department decisions.

“He has the duty to supervise DOJ, including, if necessary, on specific cases,” Paoletta wrote on X. “Our system does not permit an unaccountable agency. As Chief Justice Roberts held in U.S. v. Trump, ‘the constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President.’”

trump 2024Paoletta noted that in 1984 President Ronald Reagan shut down a grand jury antitrust investigation into British airlines and in 1992 President George H.W. Bush urged the Justice Department to intensify its investigation into the Los Angeles police officers involved in beating motorist Rodney King.

However, those instances have been rare exceptions since the 1970s, when targeting of political opponents by President Richard Nixon and revelations of FBI abuses of the civil liberties of civil rights activists led to policies that sought to wall off the White House from civil and criminal enforcement actions overseen by the Justice Department. Since President Jimmy Carter, officials from every administration — including Trump’s first one — have issued memos limiting such contacts.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Trump’s Civil Service Plan: ‘A Train Wreck You Can See Coming,’ Jyoti Thottam, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Handing over the presidency from one administration to the next is a big task, with all kinds of procedures in place to make the transition run smoothly.

The Trump transition team is not interested in any of those procedures. It has not participated in transition planning, security clearances or ethics reviews with the departing administration, even as it prepares to name about 4,000 people as political appointees to run various agencies and departments in the federal government. It’s very possible that new Trump officials will simply move in with their desk décor on Inauguration Day and not worry about it.

“This would be the worst form of malpractice,” Max Stier, the president and C.E.O. of the Partnership for Public Service, told me. This concept of a plan, to put a new executive branch into place without any vetting or training, expecting that each person is capable of walking in and flying the plane, is worrying for a few reasons.

trump 2024For one, there is a real but small possibility of a disruptive event — like a cyberattack or terrorist attack — during the transition, already a moment of maximum vulnerability for the national security apparatus. Without a proper transition process, that risk grows.

But more important, this administration’s disregard for an orderly, procedural transition demonstrates a vision of an executive branch that serves the will of the president rather than the public.

At the end of his first term, Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a Schedule F category of federal employees, who would be political appointments rather than career civil service workers. If, as expected, Trump issues a similar order in January, the government could fire thousands of workers who would lose their civil service protections in crucial positions in national security, drug safety and public health. Trump then could fill those positions with those who are loyal to him and him alone.

Stier is particularly worried about lesser-known agencies like the White House Office of Management and Budget, which he described as “the nerve center of our government.” In the first Trump administration, career civil servants in that office gave honest assessments of the effects that various Trump policies would have and of whether they were legal. Once those people are replaced with loyalists, there is a substantial risk that this sort of expertise disappears.

“This is a train wreck you can see coming,” Stier said.

Congress could, of course, block Trump from doing this. What’s more likely to happen is a protracted period of legal challenges from individuals and government employee unions while many of the best people in government simply leave for the private sector. That would compound the tragedy.

Americans need people who are already in government and can speak up about bad policies to use the power that they have. Soon there may be a lot fewer of them.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump, allies signal they will try to call the shots for Republican-led Senate, Mariana Alfaro, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.).  President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday demanded that the next Senate GOP leader allow him to make appointments to his administration and the courts without Senate approval. 

President-elect Donald Trump and his allies signaled Sunday that they will try to call the shots in the Republican-led Senate, pushing the candidacy of Sen. Rick Scott (Florida) for GOP leader and demanding that Republicans allow Trump to make appointments to his administration and the courts without Senate approval.Get the latest election news and results

trump 2024Trump, who last year promised that he will be dictator “for Day One” of his presidency and has repeatedly expressed admiration for authoritarian leaders, insisted that the next Senate Republican leader make it possible for him to fast-track his nominations over any opposition.

Writing on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump said: “Any Republican Senator seeking the coveted LEADERSHIP position in the United States Senate must agree to Recess Appointments (in the Senate!), without which we will not be able to get people confirmed in a timely manner.”

In April 2020, frustrated with the Senate’s speed in confirming his nominees, then-President Trump threated to take the unprecedented step of unilaterally adjourning Congress to make recess appointments. Next year, Republicans are on track to have at least 53 senators, a comfortable majority to approve nominations, but Trump seemed to indicate that wasn’t sufficient for his choices for federal jobs and judicial vacancies. The 2024 election is in danger: 40,000 self-proclaimed vigilante vote-fraud hunters have already challenged the rights of 851,000 voters of color. In Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, investigative reporter Greg Palast hunts down the MAGA vigilantes who are coming for your vote!

djt project 2025 

washington post logoWashington Post, The New Administration: Congress set to extend government shutdown deadline into Trump’s term, Jacob Bogage, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). With Republicans on cusp of unified control of Washington, Congress appears primed to extend federal funding well into President-elect Donald Trump’s term.

Lawmakers are discussing a temporary measure that would fund the government into March, according to two people briefed on the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

trump 2024That would give the Senate plenty of time to begin confirming Trump’s Cabinet nominees, and the House time to plot out maneuvers on tax legislation, without the threat of an imminent government shutdown. Without new legislation, financing for federal agencies will expire Dec. 20.

djt maga hatThe proposed timeline also jibes with the timing of a plan originally put forward by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) in September. Johnson proposed a six-month continuing resolution, or CR, that would have lasted until March and included unrelated legislation the House had previously approved to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in national elections.

But Republicans across the ideological spectrum — from defense hawks to penny-pinchers — opposed that plan, as did many members from both parties in the Senate. So Congress instead backed a shorter temporary funding law and hoped to complete annual spending bills or pass another extension by the December deadline.

Global Politics, War, Famine, Human Rights

Politico, Germany’s snap election: What happens now? James Angelos and Nette Nöstlinger, Nov. 12, 2024. It’s a particularly bad time for Berlin to be experiencing political paralysis pending the formation of a new government.

Amid all the commotion over the U.S. presidential election last week, you may have missed many of the details concerning another piece of significant news: the collapse of Germany’s ruling coalition.

Just hours after it became clear that Donald Trump had won the U.S. vote, sending shockwaves across Europe, Chancellor Olaf Scholz appeared before cameras to announce the end of his battered, three-way alliance in rather dramatic fashion (at least by the staid standard of German politics). Scholz’s announcement set in motion a series of events that will lead to a German snap election within months, although the exact timing isn’t yet clear.

Here’s a rundown to bring you up to speed on what just happened in Germany — and what to expect next.Why did the ruling coalition fall?

german flagGermany’s three-party ruling coalition — consisting of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens on the left side of the political spectrum, and the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) on the center right — was never a match made in heaven. Both the SPD and the Greens favor a strong social safety net and big investment to speed economic growth and the green energy transition. The FDP, on the other hand, believes in less government and less spending.

You may ask yourself why this triad came together in the first place. Good question! Simply put, there weren’t a lot of options given Germany’s increasingly splintered political landscape, as the rise of upstart parties has made it more difficult for the big-tent parties — the SPD and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) — to form two-party coalition governments.

The fragmentation has worsened with the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, now polling in second place nationally, and will continue with the arrival of populist-left newcomer Alliance Sarah Wagenknecht (BSW). Post-war Germany hasn’t had much experience of larger coalitions (Scholz’s fallen triad was the first three-way alliance in over six decades), but the ongoing division may make such coalitions — which tend to be more volatile — the new norm.

The key moment in the early demise of Scholz’s coalition came a year ago, when Germany’s top court handed down a bombshell ruling that ended a workaround the government had been using to spend money without violating the country’s constitutional “debt brake.” In order to circumvent those self-imposed fiscal strictures, Scholz’s coalition had relied on a network of “special funds” outside the main budget. The court deemed the practice unlawful, blowing a €60 billion hole in the federal budget in the process.

After that, Scholz’s coalition, which had relied on the free flow of money to paper over its major ideological differences, was not long for this world. A string of embarrassing election defeats and record-low approval ratings prompted the coalition parties to play to their bases to revive their political fortunes, worsening their incessant squabbling.

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: U.S. Election Sends Alarming Message for Global Climate Efforts, Somini Sengupta, Nov. 6 2024. ed.). The Trump victory sets back the world’s attempt to rein in dangerous levels of warming and potentially isolates the United States in the global energy transition.

ny times logoNew York Times, U.K. Plans to Fine Tech Executives for Illegal Weapon Sales Online, Stephen Castle and Adam Satariano, Nov. 13, 2024.In a bid to curb knife crime, the government would hold tech officials liable for illicit sales on their platforms, a significant shift in internet regulation.

djt validimir putin

washington post logoWashington  Post, Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate war in Ukraine, Ellen Nakashima, John Hudson and Josh Dawsey, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.). In his presidential campaign, Donald Trump said he would bring an immediate end to the war, though he did not offer details about how he intended to do so.

President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the first phone conversation between the two men since Trump won the election, said several people familiar with the matter.

During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Russian FlagThe two men discussed the goal of peace on the European continent and Trump expressed an interest in follow-up conversations to discuss “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon,” several of the people said.

ukraine flagIn his presidential campaign, Trump said he would bring an immediate end to the war in Ukraine, though did not offer details about how he intended to do so. He has signaled privately that he would support a deal where Russia kept some captured territory, and during the call he briefly raised the issue of land, people familiar with the matter said.

Orban predicts Trump will walk away from Russia-Ukraine war0:46Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during an interview on Nov. 8 ”Americans will quit” the Ukraine war under President-elect Donald Trump. (Video: Reuters)

The call, which has not been previously reported, comes amid general uncertainty about how Trump will reset the world’s diplomatic chessboard of U.S. allies and adversaries after his decisive victory on Tuesday. Trump told NBC on Thursday that he had spoken to about 70 world leaders since the election, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — a call that Elon Musk also joined.

Ukrainian officials have been informed of the Putin call and did not object to the conversation taking place, said two people familiar with the matter. Ukrainian officials have long understood that Trump would engage with Putin on a diplomatic solution for Ukraine, the people said.

Trump’s initial calls with world leaders are not being conducted with the support of the State Department and U.S. government interpreters. The Trump transition team has yet to sign an agreement with the General Services Administration, a standard procedure for presidential transitions. Trump and his aides are distrustful of career government officials following the leaked transcripts of presidential calls during his first term. “They are just calling [Trump] directly,” one of the people familiar with the calls said.

Ukraine requires billions of dollars in economic and military support every month to continue to fend off its bigger and better-equipped foe, which has made significant military advances in recent months. Trump has complained about the war’s cost to U.S. taxpayers and privately noted that Ukraine may have to give up some of its territory, such as Crimea, for peace.

Tensions between Ukraine and the Trump campaign were heightened following Zelensky’s visit to an ammunition plant in Pennsylvania in September. The visit to the swing state was criticized as a political stunt by Trump allies, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), who called for Zelensky to fire his ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova.

washington post logoWashington Post, Kremlin spokesman claims Putin-Trump call did not occur, Mary Ilyushina and Catherine Belton, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The Kremlin denied Monday that President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian leader Vladimir Putin last week, saying there are no specific plans for the two leaders to communicate yet.

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the men spoke on Thursday, with Trump joining the call from his resort in Florida. According to five people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, Trump advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the story “completely untrue.”

“This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is now published, sometimes even in fairly respected publications. This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, this is simply false information,” he told the Russian news agency Interfax.

The Washington Post reported that the two men spoke on Thursday, with President-elect Donald Trump joining the call from his resort in Florida.

The Kremlin denial of the call came amid nervousness in Moscow over whether Trump would stick to his pre-election campaign rhetoric and seek to restore relations with Russia and bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter of Putin’s and political analyst, suggested the Kremlin did not like the phrase about U.S. troops in Europe.

“It looks like Trump is threatening Putin. If Russia now agrees to Trump’s proposal at least partially, it will turn out that he did so under pressure,” said Gallyamov, who lives in Israel after being branded a foreign agent by Russia. “Putin is very concerned with appearances and wants to look like the master of the situation, and not the one who is being threatened.”

Peskov told Russian state TV journalist Pavel Zarubin earlier that Moscow was encouraged by Trump’s campaign talk about seeking peace instead of confrontation with Russia, but he added that Trump was unpredictable and that it was not clear whether he would stick to his statements.

 Arab leaders, with the Saudi Crown Prince at center, gathered for a summit in Riyadh (Photo via Associated Press.)

Arab leaders, with the Saudi Crown Prince at center, gathered for a summit in Riyadh (Photo via Associated Press.)

vicky ward investigatesVicky Ward Investigates, It’s MBS’s World…, Vicky Ward, Nov. 11, 2024. The Saudi Crown Prince’s rise is aligned with Trump’s.

They say a picture can be worth a 1000 words, and so today I bring you two, which, together show the diametrically opposed world view which Donald Trump is going to have to adjudicate.

I am told by multiple well-placed sources, Trump already has “people” on the ground in the Middle East – never mind that’s not supposed to happen before he’s president. This isn’t that sort of government. Trump wants peace and he wants it sorted asap.

Above is the official AP photograph from today’s Arab summit in Riyadh, convened by the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) to discuss Israel’s “continued aggression” towards the Palestinians in Gaza and Lebanon. (The prince amped up his position, called on Israel to respect Iran’s sovereignty and accused Jerusalem of genocide.)

So, you want to look carefully at everyone’s positions to ascertain the new hierarchy in the region. It’s doubtful that MBS said to his guests, “Just find a mark and stand there…”

What jumps out is that MBS is standing between King Abdullah of Jordan and the Emir of Qatar, Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani.

But the UAE president, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, MBS’s former mentor, is not present. (The UAE joined Israel in signing the Abraham accords.) Next to the Emir is the Turkish president Erdoğan and behind him, head down and white haired is the Iranian vice president Mohammad Reza Aref. To King Abdullah’s right is the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and to his right, the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad.

It’s a photograph that reflects how dramatically relationships have shifted in the Gulf. This photograph simply could not have existed just a few years back. When the Saudis held a major summit on cooperation in the region in 2017, Iran was most definitely not invited (and neither was Syria’s Assad, aligned with Iran).

In fact, back then, fear of Iran’s nuclear capability united the gulf states and Israel. Iran’s neighbors, the Qataris, were mistrusted. Only weeks later the Saudis and Emiratis led a blockade of Qatar.

ny times logoNew York Times, 50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says, Julian E. Barnes, Eric Schmitt and Michael Schwirtz, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.). Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.

The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.

A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously.

Russian troops have been clawing back some of the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk this year. They have been attacking Ukrainian positions with missile strikes and artillery fire, but they have not yet begun a major assault there, U.S. officials said.

Ukrainian officials say they expect such an attack involving the North Korean troops in the coming days.

For now, the North Koreans are training with Russian forces in the far western part of Kursk.

The Russian-North Korean offensive looms as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of ending the war quickly. Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.

Some U.S. military and intelligence officials have grown more pessimistic about Ukraine’s overall prospects, noting that Russia has steadily gained ground, both in Kursk and in eastern Ukraine. Officials say the setbacks are partly a result of Ukraine’s failure to solve critical shortfalls in troop strength.

President Biden has been deeply supportive of Ukraine, pushing Congress to approve billions of dollars in aid and having the U.S. military and spy agencies provide critical intelligence to help Kyiv fight the war.

One Western official said Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Kursk in August thinned out its forces across the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, leaving them vulnerable to Russian advances. But that official, and U.S. officials, said Ukraine still had a strong defense in Kursk and might be able to hold, at least for a time.

Facebook, Robert Scott Horton, Moscow shows porno shots of younger Melania Trump on TV, Robert Scott Horton, global attorney, strategist, law professor, columnist, Nov. 10, 2024. Last night Kremlin TV, on Russia’s most popular TV show, with a huge audience, showed roughly 3 minutes of lightly edited pornographic photo shoots by Melania Knavs (who later became Melania Trump) in a segment discussing Trump’s reemergence as president-elect of the United States.

Something like this could not have occurred without Putin’s blessing. So the question is why?

Russian FlagIt’s not surprising. Putin’s message to Trump is a steady stream of saccharine and insincere flatteries.

In the meantime Putin’s message to Russians is consistently that this man is a complete buffoon whom I can regularly manipulate and turn to whatever purpose I like.

Trump seems to have no appreciation of the double channel messaging, which rather suggests he is exactly the man Putin presents to his public on the domestic channel. (Note the materials broadcast on Kremlin TV cannot be displayed on Facebook due to anti-pornography restrictions).

ny times logoNew York Times, Shigeru Ishiba Wins Vote to Remain as Japan’s Prime Minister, Motoko Rich and Hisako Ueno, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.).  Parliament voted to stick with Mr. Ishiba, who will lead a minority government after his party suffered heavy losses in an election last month.

Despite leading his party to big losses in a snap general election last month, Shigeru Ishiba, the prime minister of Japan, won a vote in Parliament on Monday to carry on as the country’s leader.

Mr. Ishiba, whose Liberal Democratic Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time in 15 years, will effectively lead a minority government.

The result puts Mr. Ishiba in a precarious position as his government continues to deal with the aftermath of a political finance scandal, along with inflation, labor shortages and the increasing burdens of an aging population. Analysts said Mr. Ishiba could struggle to survive in the long term, putting Japan at risk of returning to a revolving door of prime ministers just as it prepares to grapple with increased unpredictability in the United States, its most important international ally, following the re-election of Donald Trump as president.

In a runoff election with the leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, Japan’s largest opposition group, Mr. Ishiba defeated Yoshihiko Noda, a former prime minister, 221 to 160. Mr. Ishiba was first elected prime minister in September.

Although the Constitutional Democrats made significant gains in last month’s election, they did not win a majority in the lower house of Parliament, which would have given them the right to select the prime minister. With seven other small opposition parties fielding leadership candidates, Mr. Noda could not amass enough unified support to unseat Mr. Ishiba.

ny times logoNew York Times, Archbishop of Canterbury Resigns Over U.K. Church Abuse Scandal, Stephen Castle, Nov. 12, 2024. Justin Welby, the leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, announced his resignation days after a report found he had taken insufficient action over claims of abuse.

The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, on Tuesday announced his resignation, days after a report concluded that he had failed to ensure a proper investigation into claims that more than 100 boys and young men were abused decades ago at Christian summer camps.

Pressure had mounted on Mr. Welby, the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, after the report was published and after one senior figure in the church, the bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, called on him publicly to step aside.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Welby said, “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatizing period between 2013 and 2024.”

He said that he had sought permission to resign from King Charles III, and added: “I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church. As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.”

Mr. Welby, 68, has held his position since 2013 and was scheduled to retire in 2026. His departure brings to a premature end the tenure of the country’s best known cleric, who took over the leadership of the Church of England at a time of tension between liberals and traditionalists.

ny times logoNew York Times, As Donald Trump Threatens Wider Trade War, U.S. Confronts a Changed China, Peter S. Goodman, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The Chinese economy is more dependent on exports, making tariffs more potent, yet it’s less reliant on American markets and focused on self-sufficiency.

Eight years ago, when a newly elected Donald J. Trump promised to apply the powers of the Oval Office to start a trade war with China, the target of his ire was widely viewed as a juggernaut. China was the indispensable factory floor to the world and a swiftly developing market for goods and services.

China FlagAs Mr. Trump now prepares for his second stint in the White House, he is vowing to intensify trade hostilities with China by imposing additional tariffs of 60 percent or more on all Chinese imports. He is pressuring a country that has been chastened by a powerful combination of overlapping forces: the calamitous end of a real estate investment binge, incalculable losses in the banking system, a local government debt crisis, flagging economic growth and chronically low prices — a potential harbinger of long-term stagnation.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Trump Divides Chinese People Who Aspire to Democracy, Li Yuan, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). A new HBO documentary about opposition to autocrats says a lot about the complex politics the president-elect inspires for people fleeing countries.

The long and loud campaign of Donald J. Trump, and now his re-election as president, have prompted deep divisions among many Chinese who advocate for democracy.

China FlagWang Lixiong, a Beijing-based author, has been imprisoned and surveilled for his critical writings about China. The day before the election, he posted on X that Mr. Trump’s political alliance with the tech entrepreneur Elon Musk was worrying: “A Trump presidency combined with Musk’s influence may become a singularity that backfires on democracy.” People responded by condemning him, leaving hateful comments, including ones that wished him death.

ny times logoNew York Times, Will Trump Rekindle a Bromance With Kim Jong-un? South Koreans Worry, Choe Sang-Hun, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump’s second term brings uncertainty to the Korean Peninsula as nuclear tensions run high. North Korea’s leader may see a chance to re-engage.

During his 2024 election campaign, Donald J. Trump described the United States’ alliance with South Korea as a terrible bargain for his country, accusing the Asian ally of not paying enough ​for the 28,500 ​American troops ​stationed on its soil.

But when he mentioned Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea who has threatened to use nuclear weapons against the South, he talked as if Mr. Kim were a ​long-lost friend.

“It’s nice to get along when somebody has a lot of nuclear weapons or otherwise,” Mr. Trump said about Mr. Kim in July. “He’d like to see me back, too​. I think he misses me​, if you want to know the truth.”

South Koreans are bracing themselves for ​Mr. Trump’s return to the White House with growing anxiety and uncertainty, as it raises the specter of the diplomatic roller coaster ride on the Korean Peninsula they endured during his first term.

ny times logoNew York Times, Iran and Trump Are Front of Mind at Saudi Summit, Ismaeel Naar, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.).  Leaders from across the Muslim world gathered on Monday in the capital of Saudi Arabia for a summit that came at a delicate moment for the kingdom, which has signaled a rapprochement with Iran after a violent, decades-long rivalry.

The meeting was officially convened to discuss the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon, where Israel’s military is battling Iran-backed militant groups. It takes place amid heightened regional tensions and the prospect of a hawkish Trump administration on Iran.

Saudi Arabia had been preparing to recognize Israel, but the wars in Gaza and Lebanon cooled that prospect. Now, the kingdom and its allies find themselves warming to Tehran. Last month, the foreign ministers of the Gulf states met for the first time as a group with their Iranian counterpart. On Sunday, the Saudi and Iranian military chiefs met in Tehran — further signaling a thaw in relations as Iran considers a response to Israeli attacks on its territory.

Saudi Arabia’s powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, emphasized the relationship in his opening remarks at the event, a joint summit of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, on Monday.

“We call on the international community to compel Israel to respect Iran’s sovereignty and not to attack its territory,” he told the audience in Riyadh, the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have been locked in a long battle for regional dominance, a rivalry shaped by the competing branches of Islam that each country embraces. Iran’s network of regional proxies — which includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon — has long been a particular source of concern for Saudi Arabia.

ny times logoNew York Times, Iran Debates Whether It Could Make a Deal With Trump, Farnaz Fassihi, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Some in Iran’s new, more moderate government think Donald Trump’s win provides an opportunity to make a lasting deal with the United States.

ny times logoNew York Times, Israel Orders New Evacuations in Lebanon as Diplomacy Ramps Up, Euan Ward and Isabel Kershner, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). The widespread orders across southern Lebanon were the first such warnings in nearly a month and came amid what appeared to be intensifying efforts to reach a cease-fire.

The Israeli military issued new evacuation warnings for more than 20 towns and villages in southern Lebanon on Monday, the latest indication that its conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was deepening, despite apparently intensifying efforts to reach a cease-fire.

The widespread warnings across the country’s south, the first in nearly a month, were issued via social media and called on civilians to immediately evacuate their homes and move north above the Awali River, farther from the Israeli border. The river effectively demarcates southern Lebanon, which Israel invaded last month in a bid to destroy Hezbollah’s infrastructure and stop it from firing rockets and missiles into Israel.

The latest conflict between Israel and Hezbollah began last year, when Hezbollah started its cross-border assaults in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza, forcing tens of thousands of Israelis to leave their homes in northern Israel. The conflict has significantly escalated in recent weeks, setting off a humanitarian crisis in Lebanon. Nearly 3,200 people have been killed and more than a fifth of the Lebanese population has been displaced.

ny times logoNew York Times, Caught Between Wars, Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Return Home, Ben Hubbard, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Hundreds of thousands of Syrians who escaped civil war at home over the past decade have now fled the conflict in Lebanon, seeking safety in their own shattered country.When the civil war in Syria threatened his village more than a decade ago, a farmer and his family fled to neighboring Lebanon.

The farmer, Ali Kheir Khallu, 37, found work there growing oranges and bananas. Life was hard, he said, but at least he felt safe.

That feeling vanished last month as Israel ramped up its war with Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militia, heavily bombing sites that it said belonged to the group. When the bombs fell near Mr. Kheir Khallu’s house, he packed up his family, left behind the new lives they had built in Lebanon and fled back to Syria, where they are now struggling to start over, yet again.

“You want to make up for all that you have lost,” he said. “But you are still in shock.”

As the war in Lebanon expands, more than 1.2 million people — one-fifth of the population — have been displaced from their homes, the government says.

While most have sought safety in other parts of Lebanon, more than 470,000 people, mostly Syrians, have crossed into Syria in the last six weeks, aid groups say.

Since Syrian rebels tried to topple the government in 2011, President Bashar al-Assad has fought to stay in power, with his forces bombing and besieging opposition communities and repeatedly using chemical weapons. The war drew in Russia, the United States, the jihadists of Islamic State and other forces, displacing about 12 million residents, or more than half the country’s population.

More than 1.1 million Syrians registered as refugees in Lebanon, most of them deeply impoverished and in Lebanese communities that wanted them to leave. Some of these refugees have now decided to try their luck in their own shattered country rather than under the bombs in Lebanon. But they must navigate Syria’s tattered economy, damaged communities and a government long known to trample on human rights.

Mr. al-Assad’s authoritarian government controls most of Syria’s major cities, but large parts of the country are dominated by either Turkish-backed armed groups in the northwest or a Kurdish-led militia supported by the United States in the northeast.

Human Rights Watch warned recently that Syrians returning home could face repression by the government, including forced disappearance and torture.

Justice Integrity Project Director Andrew Kreig is shown at right in a panel with Rostyslav Pavlenko, a former top aide to Ukraine’s president, seated at center and Security Service of Ukraine Senior Investigator Anton Stepanov on the Zoom screen on Oct. 29, 2024 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (Photo via the Associated Press). The conference “Russian Disinformation: Tactics, Influence, and Threats to National Security” brought together prominent experts in media, politics, security, and human rights, along with representatives from various religious communities, to address the escalating challenge of Russian disinformation. Held in Washington, D.C., this conference provided an essential platform to examine Russia’s manipulation of global narratives and its impact on national and international stability.

Justice Integrity Project Director Andrew Kreig is shown at right in a panel with Rostyslav Pavlenko, a former top aide to Ukraine’s president, seated at center and Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Senior Investigator Anton Stepanov on the Zoom screen on Oct. 29, 2024 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC (Photo via the Associated Press).

PRNewswire via Associated Press, Experts Sound Alarm on Russian Disinformation Threat To Global Security and Religious Freedoms, Coalition Against ap logoDisinformation, Oct. 30, 2024.

The conference “Russian Disinformation: Tactics, Influence, and Threats to National Security” brought together prominent experts in media, politics, security, and human rights, along with representatives from various religious communities, to address the escalating challenge of Russian disinformation. Held in Washington, D.C., this conference provided an essential platform to examine Russia’s manipulation of global narratives and its impact on national and international stability.

ukraine flagThe event’s agenda covered a range of critical topics, from how Russian disinformation seeks to destabilize governments and manipulate elections to its detrimental effects on religious freedoms in occupied territories and beyond. Experts highlighted how disinformation strategies are shaping global perceptions of Russia’s military activities and fostering divisions within societies worldwide.

The opening panel, “The Strategic Use of Disinformation in Propaganda,” explored how Russia amplifies false narratives, particularly through social media, sometimes finding inadvertent support from mainstream media. Experts discussed the rapid spread of state-backed “alternative” news sources and the heightened challenge of detecting disinformation in real time. The panel highlighted the vital role of fact-checking organizations and the responsibility of the media to curb the flow of disinformation.

Key Insights from International Experts

  • Anna Vyshnyakova, international criminal law expert and head of the NGO LingvaLexa, remarked, “Russia’s strategy is to disguise disinformation under the cover of entertainment and journalism—even embedding it in video games—to push fake news about Ukraine and conceal war crimes committed by Russian forces. The international community needs to be vigilant and aware of these tactics.” Areig Elhag, a Washington-based journalist and television anchor, stated, “Social media has become a battlefield for Russian disinformation, particularly during election cycles when influence campaigns can reshape public opinion and even alter the course of democratic processes. We must ensure that platforms take their responsibilities seriously to safeguard these spaces.” Jason Shelton, Policy Advisor and Regional Administrator for the General Services Administration in the Biden-Harris Administration, underscored the importance of a coordinated approach: “Disinformation is not merely a nuisance; it’s a direct threat to democratic values and national security. Combating it effectively requires a united front between governments, media, and civil society.”
  • Ukrainian parliament members, including Rostyslav Pavlenko, Lesya Zaburanna, Anna Skorokhod, and Rostyslav Tistyk, and communication experts, including T.C. Cameron and Andrew Kreig, echoed Shelton’s sentiment, emphasizing the urgent need for international cooperation to combat Russian influence campaigns.
  • A key session, “Russian Disinformation and the Erosion of Religious Freedoms in Occupied Territories and Democratic Nations,” explored Russia’s manipulation of religious freedoms to deepen societal divisions. The panel examined how Russian state actors and aligned organizations use disinformation to marginalize religious communities, especially in regions such as Crimea and Donbas, with ripple effects felt globally.
  • Andrii Oliinyk, Head of the Aggression Division at Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General stated, “The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine is conducting major investigations concerning networks involved in the establishment of Russian religious structures aimed at further occupation in both post-Soviet countries and European Union member states.”
  • Panelist Anton Stepanov, Senior Investigator at the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), added, “Our investigation has established and documented that the Russian Orthodox Church is an element of the Russian Federation’s propaganda machinery, alongside the media and Russian intelligence services.”
  • Russian FlagOther speakers at the conference noted that the Russian Orthodox Church, through anti-cult entities like RACIRS (Russian Association of Centers for the Study of Religion and Sects), has frequently targeted various religious and non-religious groups. RACIRS has been accused of instigating fear and mistrust by labeling religions such as Scientology, Baptists, Pentecostals, Orthodox Christians outside the Moscow Patriarchate, and civil society organizations as “dangerous cults.”
  • In regions under occupation, anti-cult campaigns have led to the persecution of various religious communities. Rabbi Ederi Liron expressed concern: “The rhetoric from Russian-backed groups has real-world consequences. Entire communities have been forced to cease their religious practices, and religious freedoms are rapidly disappearing in occupied areas.”
  • Religious leaders from across Ukraine, including Metropolitan Klyment of Simferopol and Crimea, Maxym Krupskyi, director of the Religious Freedom Department of the Adventist Church in Ukraine, Yuriy Kulakevych, head of the Department of International Relations and Religious Freedom of the Ukrainian Pentecostal Church (Ukrainian Church of Evangelical Faith), and Yuriy Pidlisnyy, head of the “Ethics. Politics. Economics” program at the Ukrainian Catholic University, united in their call for increased vigilance and action against Russian disinformation tactics.

The full agenda with speakers can be found here.

The report on Russian disinformation was unveiled at the event, providing a comprehensive analysis of the tactics and methods Russia employs to undermine religious rights and influence elections, can be found here.

washington post logoWashington Post, Ukraine launches biggest drone attack yet on Moscow, Natalia Abbakumova, Kostiantyn Khudov and David L. Stern, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.). Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defense systems intercpted 70 Ukrainian drones over six regions, including 34 over the Moscow region.

ukraine flagUkraine launched a major drone attack on Moscow and five other Russian regions Sunday, officials here reported, injuring one person and forcing three airports to temporarily halt operations.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement that its air defense systems intercepted 70 Ukrainian drones over the Moscow, Bryansk, Oryol, Kaluga, Kursk and Tula regions. Thirty-four of those drones were shot down over the Moscow region, the ministry said — making it the largest Ukrainian drone attack on Moscow since Russia’s invasion began over two years ago.

ny times logoNew York Times, Civilian Terror: Russia Hits Ukrainian Cities With Waves of Drones, Marc Santora,  Nov. 8, 2024 (print ed.).  Moscow has been using decoy drones with no warheads to overwhelm defenses, and surveillance drones and strike drones to gather intelligence, officials said.

Russian FlagAs Russian troops march relentlessly forward with fierce assaults in Ukraine’s east, Moscow is unleashing a different form of terror on civilians in towns and cities: a wave of long-range drone strikes that has little precedent in the 32-month-old war.

Over the past two months, there was only one night when Russia did not launch swarms of drones packed with explosives at targets far from the front, including near-nightly attacks aimed at Kyiv, the capital.

In October, the Ukrainian military said it tracked a record 2,023 unmanned aircraft against civilian and military targets, with the vast majority shot down or disabled by electronic warfare systems.

Night after night, the explosions echo across Kyiv, with tracer fire lighting up the sky as spotlights search for the triangle-shape drones flying over residential neighborhoods.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump’s Victory Offers New Opening for Putin in U.S.-Russia Relations, Anton Troianovski and Valerie Hopkins, Nov. 8, 2024 (print ed.). Russians close to the Kremlin voiced optimism that Donald J. Trump could help end the war in Ukraine on Russia’s terms. But Moscow also remembers Trump’s first term as a disappointment.

The Kremlin tried and failed for four years to turn President Donald J. Trump’s friendly rhetoric into friendly policy.

Now it has a second chance.

Russian FlagIn the run-up to Tuesday’s U.S. election, Russian officials said they cared little about the outcome. American policy toward Russia had only hardened during Mr. Trump’s four years in office, they argued, citing sanctions and his delivery of weapons to Ukraine.

But after Mr. Trump’s victory, the mood began to shift. Some people close to the Kremlin sought to pave the way for rapprochement with Washington despite what many Russians see as an American proxy war against them in Ukraine.

“Trump and his team have a reputation of being very pragmatic,” Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, said in a phone interview on Wednesday. Mr. Trump’s return to the White House would be an opportunity, he added, to “look at things in a more problem-solving manner than was done by previous administrations.”

Mr. Dmitriev declined to comment on whether he had sent private messages this week to anyone on the Trump team. But he issued a public statement signaling that the Kremlin saw a second Trump presidency as a welcome change, and a new opening to form a bond with Mr. Trump — who has often praised Mr. Putin’s authoritarian leadership and avoided condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After the “lies, incompetence and malice of the Biden administration,” Mr. Dmitriev said, there were now “new opportunities for resetting relations between Russia and the United States.”ountry superstar Garth Brooks identified an anonymous accuser in court papers. Few, if any, media outlets published her name.

ny times logoNew York Times, Middle East Crisis: U.S. to Keep Sending Arms to Israel Despite Dire Conditions in Gaza, Edward Wong and Farnaz Fassihi, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The State Department said Israel needed to take more steps to improve the situation among Palestinians. The U.S. had given the country 30 days to meet aid criteria.

The State Department said on Tuesday that it did not plan to decrease weapons aid to Israel, as a 30-day deadline set by the Biden administration passed without the country substantially improving the humanitarian situation in war-devastated Gaza.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III had warned in a letter dated Oct. 13 that the United States would reassess its military aid to Israel if it failed to increase the amount of aid allowed to enter Gaza within 30 days.

The letter said that the humanitarian situation for the two million residents of Gaza was “increasingly dire” and that the amount of aid entering Gaza had fallen by 50 percent since April.

By law, the U.S. government cannot give aid to foreign military forces deemed by the State Department to be committing “gross violations of human rights.”

U.N. officials have said Israel’s continued blocking of humanitarian aid and targeting of humanitarian workers constitute violations of international law and could amount to war crimes.

Food insecurity experts working on an initiative controlled by U.N. bodies and major relief agencies said last week that famine was imminent or most likely already occurring in northern Gaza. U.N. officials say the entire population of Gaza is facing food insecurity.

ny times logoNew York Times, Palestinians Try to Sway Trump Via His Daughter’s Relative, Adam Rasgon and Charles Homans, Nov.  11, 2024 (print ed.). The Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has met with Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law, a Lebanese-American businessman, and written to Donald Trump.

These overtures by Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, are part of a broad strategy to rehabilitate his once adversarial relationship with Mr. Trump as Palestinians reckon with an incoming president who expressed near unreserved backing for Israel in his first term.

palestinian flagEven Hamas, the armed group that led the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that ignited the Gaza war and a bitter rival of the Palestinian Authority, has adopted a more cautious tone toward Mr. Trump. Some Palestinians in Gaza, who have endured a devastating Israeli bombardment, expressed hope that Mr. Trump could end the war, while others said they were skeptical.

As president, Mr. Trump advanced policies that infuriated the Palestinian Authority, which has limited autonomy over parts of the West Bank under Israeli occupation. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, cut off aid to the U.N. agency that supports Palestinian refugees, presented a peace plan that favored Israel and helped hammer out agreements between Israel and Arab states that sidestepped Palestinian ambitions to achieve independence.

Incensed, Mr. Abbas barred senior Palestinian officials from contact with people in the Trump administration.

But Mr. Trump has publicly called for the war in Gaza to stop. Mr. Abbas appears to be reversing course, hoping to influence the president-elect’s views on the conflict and cease-fire talks.

ny times logoNew York Times, Notre-Dame’s Bells Ring Together for First Time Since Fire, Nov. 11, 2024. The sound of the cathedral’s bells pealed throughout Paris for the first time since 2019 — a symbol of rebirth as it prepared to reopen next month.

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More Election News, Analysis

project 2025 main

The Bulwark, Commentary: It Could Get Bad Quick, William Kristol and Andrew Egger, Nov. 12, 2024.  Donald Trump’s earliest personnel announcements show how swiftly he’s forging ahead with his mass-deportation plans.

The Bulwark, Commentary: The Policy Matters More Than the Personnel,  William Kristol,  Nov. 12, 2024. You know what can drive you kind of crazy? Looking in the rear view mirror and second-guessing every tactical decision the Harris campaign made.

bulwark logo big shipYou know what comes in second in craziness inducement? Trying each day to interpret the tea leaves of Trump’s appointments to his new administration.

Who knows how all the appointments and power relationships and jockeying in Trump world will shake out? It’s interesting, and can be important, and we’ll be covering it all in The Bulwark. Personnel is to some degree policy, so it does matter.

But most of it probably won’t matter too much. It’s Trump world, and the personnel who matter most are Trump and JD Vance and Elon Musk. And it’s MAGA world, so there’ll be a wacky mix of crazies along with opportunists, fanatics along with careerists, populating the new administration.

Some of it will be awful, and much of it merely depressing. There may even be some flashes of light. But my advice would be: Generally, don’t sweat all the appointments.

Do sweat the big and disastrous policies—the mass deportations, the betrayal of Ukraine, and the January 6th pardons.

And do pay attention to the attempted destruction of the civil service and government norms and the rule of law with Schedule F and related Project 2025 efforts, and to the attempt to turn the power ministries—Justice and Defense and CIA—into personal fiefdoms for Trump and Trumpism.

So pay attention when Mark Paoletta, Ginni Thomas’s lawyer, who apparently is in charge of the transition at the Department of Justice for Trump, and who could be White House Counsel or the Attorney General, says: “Career employees are required to implement the president’s plan. . . . If these career DOJ employees won’t implement President Trump’s program in good faith, they should leave.”

So get ready for the attempted purges. Get ready to defend those whom the Trumpists will try to purge. And get ready to explain to the public why it’s important that in the United States civil servants do not swear an oath to President Trump. They do swear an oath to “support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” on which they will enter.

Honoring the Constitution and the office—not Trump and his whims. Administering the rule of law—not carrying out the Leader’s diktats. Those differences matter. They are worth fighting for.

The Bulwark, Commentary:  A New Type of Operation Warp Speed, Andrew Egger, , Nov. 12, 2024. Here’s the bedrock question that dictates how the early days of Donald Trump’s second term will go:

Did voters go in with clear eyes about what he was promising? Or did they simply vote out the party holding the bag on inflation, pushing a big button with “CHANGE” printed on it with only a gauzy idea of what would come next?

bulwark logo big shipIt won’t take long to find out.

On the campaign trail, Trump routinely pledged to begin “the biggest mass deportation in history” on his first day in office. His earliest personnel announcements make clear he plans to be as good as his word.

Stephen Miller, perhaps the most rabidly anti-immigration (legal and illegal) voice in Trump’s first term, will quarterback Trump’s policy agenda as deputy chief of staff. The New York Times reports that Miller’s portfolio “is expected to be vast and to far exceed what the eventual title will convey.”

Miller will be aided by Tom Homan, Trump’s former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, whom Trump has now tapped as his “border czar.”

During Trump’s first term, Homan was most notable as the intellectual father of Trump’s most controversial immigration move: the “zero tolerance” policy that separated thousands of migrant parents and children in 2017 and 2018. Ripping families apart, Homan told the Atlantic in 2022, would help discourage other families from making the trek: “Most parents don’t want to be separated.”

Today, he’s setting his sights higher. Last month, a CBS reporter asked Homan whether it would be possible to carry out mass deportations without separating families. “Of course there is,” Homan replied. “Families can be deported together.”

The subtext here, of course, is that many illegal immigrants have U.S.-born children who are American citizens under the 14th Amendment. But Trump has also promised a day one executive order “ending” the constitutional doctrine of birthright citizenship, daring the courts to stop him.

Last night, Homan appeared on Fox News for an interview with Sean Hannity, who floated a possible way Trump could make his deportations at least appear more humane: Why not encourage illegal immigrants to self-report for deportation in exchange for some cash to help them restart their lives, and the possibility of a pathway to return legally within a year or two? Homan didn’t bite. “The ones that want to go home on their own—they found their way across the world to come to the greatest nation on earth. They can find their way home.”

Polling regularly suggested throughout the year that a majority of the public supports mass deportations: a Scripps/Ipsos poll in September put the proposal at 54 percent support, 42 percent opposition. But there’s also reason to believe that public support is a mile wide and an inch deep—that people believe unchecked immigration is out of control but lack a concrete sense of what a mass-deportation operation would look like in practice.

One poll taken by Data for Progress last month presented respondents with a number of hypothetical border-crossers, then asked them simply: Should this person be deported? In two of these hypothetical cases—a person who recently crossed the border without legal status, and a person who crossed the border with a criminal record for a non-violent offense—strong majorities favored deportation. But strong majorities opposed deportation for each of the other hypothetical immigrants: an educated person who had overstayed a visa, a longtime illegal resident with U.S.-born children, a person currently in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, a person awaiting an asylum decision, and a person brought to the United States as a child who has lived here for 20 years.

If 65 percent of Americans oppose deporting non-citizens who have lived here since childhood, with only 19 percent supporting such deportations, how many would cheer the far more berserk policy of deporting U.S. citizens to countries they’ve never even seen?

Voters’ opinions are always in flux. Joe Biden spent the first six months of his presidency enjoying respectable approval ratings—but they cratered in the wake of his first serious policy embarrassment, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, and never recovered. Voters who liked a hypothetical Trump return may find themselves repulsed when they see it in action. We’ll soon find out.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: If You Thought Trump Wasn’t Serious, Look at His First Appointments, Michelle Goldberg, Nov. 12, 2024. A strange thing about michelle goldberg thumbthe presidential campaign we just endured is how many people rationalized their support for Donald Trump by arguing that he wouldn’t make good on some of his central promises.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, right, poses with his father, former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat as is his son.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, right, poses with his father, former Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat as is his son.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: I’m the Governor of Kentucky. Here’s How Democrats Can Win Again, Andy Beshear, Nov. 12, 2024. Mr. Beshear, a Democrat,is the governor of Kentucky.

With the November elections over, the political analysis and finger-pointing have begun on cable news and within the national Democratic Party. While I’m deeply disappointed with the national result, I refuse to play the blame game. Campaigns are hard. Candidates and their families are put through hell. And all the candidates tried hard to win, even if they came up short.

What I offer instead is a way forward. I won re-election 12 months ago by five points in a state that Donald Trump just carried by 30 points. And I did so at a time when inflation and illegal border crossings were higher than they are now. So how was it possible? Because the people of Kentucky know I care about them personally and, most important, that I am focused on what matters most in their daily lives. That’s a trust leaders must earn not only in their messaging but also in their everyday actions.

When most Americans wake up in the morning, they are not thinking about politics. Americans wake up thinking about their jobs and whether they make enough money to support their families. We wake up thinking about the next doctor’s appointment for ourselves, our parents or our kids. We wake up thinking about the roads and bridges we will drive on that day, wondering how safe they are and how much traffic we will see. We wake up thinking about the public school we will drop our kids off at, and we wake up thinking about public safety in our communities.

ny times logoNew York Times, Federal Judge Blocks Louisiana Law Requiring Ten Commandments in Classrooms, Rick Rojas, Nov. 13, 2024. The ruling is probably the first in what could be a long legal fight for conservative Christian groups hoping to amplify public expressions of faith.

A federal judge in Louisiana blocked a state law on Tuesday that would have required the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. The legislation, passed by state lawmakers this year, has been closely watched, because Louisiana was the first state to enact this kind of mandate in more than 40 years.

The decision was a setback for supporters of the measure, but not an unexpected one: Proponents have braced themselves for pushback and, in many ways, have invited a lengthy legal fight, as part of a larger effort by conservative Christian groups to amplify public expressions of faith.

John W. deGravelles, a U.S. District Court judge appointed to the bench by President Barack Obama, found that the law, which was scheduled to take effect on Jan. 1, was unconstitutional. He forbade the state from enforcing it.

In his decision, Judge deGravelles wrote that the law was “coercive to students, and, for all practical purposes, they cannot opt out of viewing the Ten Commandments when they are displayed in every classroom, every day of the year, every year of their education.”

ny times logoNew York Times, Democratic Governors Form a Group to Oppose the Trump Administration, Reid J. Epstein, Nov. 13, 2024. The group’s leaders, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado, are ambitious Democrats likely to try to fill the party’s looming leadership void.

In the first of what is likely to be several groups that sprout to resist the next Trump administration, two Democratic governors announced on Wednesday that they were forming a group to help protect state-level institutions of democracy.

The group, Governors Safeguarding Democracy, is meant to serve as a mechanism for Democratic states to coordinate efforts to oppose the right-wing policies of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Its leaders, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Jared Polis of Colorado, are among a group of ambitious Democrats likely to try to fill a party-wide leadership void once President Biden leaves office.

“Donald Trump is going to bring people into his administration who are absolute loyalists to his cult of personality and not necessarily to the law,” Mr. Pritzker said. “Last time, he didn’t really know where the levels of government were. I think he probably does now. And so I think that the threat remains great.”

What exactly the organization will do is not entirely clear.

ny times logoNew York Times, Some Black Voters Ask, What Have Democrats Done for Us? Troy Closson, Clyde McGrady and Rick Rojas, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). In interviews, these voters, especially men, questioned what dividends have come from their loyalty: “I’m just kind of over it all.”

In the final weeks of the campaign, many Democrats hoped that signs of crumbling support among Black voters would not materialize at the polls.

The historic nature of the campaign, with the possibility of the country electing a Black and Indian American woman as its leader, inspired some confidence.

There was also an expectation that Mr. Trump’s baggage would be poisonous, as he was heavily criticized for trying to discredit Ms. Harris’s racial identity, spreading vicious disinformation about Haitians eating pets and accusing immigrants of taking “Black jobs.”

And for an overwhelming majority of Black Americans, those reasons were more than enough to justify supporting Ms. Harris. But her loss has illuminated a percolating sense of dissatisfaction and an increasingly conspicuous divide within the Black community, as a segment of Black voters rejected her campaign and the message of the Democratic Party more broadly.

Some of those voters, namely working-class Black men, said they doubted their circumstances would fundamentally change, regardless of who won. The dissatisfaction — evident in urban centers in swing states, like Milwaukee and Philadelphia, as well as remote reaches in the Mississippi Delta — was potent enough to depress turnout in some Democratic strongholds and even flip some majority-Black counties to Mr. Trump.

ny times logoNew York Times, Colleges Wonder if They Will Be ‘the Enemy’ Under Donald Trump, Vimal Patel and Sharon Otterman, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Higher education has been a target of Republicans who believe schools have tilted leftward. Colleges are bracing for the Trump administration to take action.

For many years, Republicans portrayed colleges as bastions of leftism, awash in bias against conservatives and impervious to change.

With Donald J. Trump’s victory to a second presidential term and a Congress potentially under unified G.O.P. control, Republicans are now poised to escalate their efforts to root out what they see as progressive ideology in higher education.

The return to power of Mr. Trump comes at a vulnerable moment for higher education. Universities have been under increasing pressure from lawmakers, while public confidence in colleges has fallen. Last year, two Ivy League presidents resigned following their widely panned performances before Congressional panels that grilled them about how they handled pro-Palestinian activists on their campuses. Other top university leaders have resigned amid criticism over protest responses.

Mr. Trump has said he thought that colleges needed to be reclaimed from “Marxist maniacs,” and his running mate, JD Vance, has described universities as “the enemy.” (Both men attended Ivy League institutions.)

Republicans have often trained their focus mainly on highly selective campuses, but their proposed policies could have a wider impact. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — an outline for Mr. Trump’s second term that he has tried to distance himself from — calls for sweeping changes, like privatizing all student loans, rolling back protections for transgender students, and paring back diversity efforts on campus.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Picks Lee Zeldin to Lead E.P.A. as He Plans to Gut Climate Rules, Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman, Nov. 12, 2024 (print ed.). Mr. Zeldin, a former congressman from New York, is a strong supporter of Donald Trump and voted against certifying the 2020 election.

President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Monday that he will nominate former Rep. Lee Zeldin, right, lee zeldin 2017Republican of New York, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a position that is expected to be central to Mr. Trump’s plans to dismantle landmark climate regulations.

Mr. Trump campaigned on pledges to “kill” and “cancel” E.P.A. rules and regulations to combat global warming by restricting fossil fuel pollution from vehicle tailpipes, power plant smokestacks and oil and gas wells.

In particular, Mr. Trump wants to erase the Biden administration’s most significant climate rule, which is designed to speed a transition away from gasoline-powered cars and toward electric vehicles.

A former congressman from Long Island who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2022, Mr. Zeldin, 44, is an avid Trump supporter who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 election.

washington post logoWashington Post, Democrat Bynum flips Oregon’s 5th District in third race against Rep. Chavez-DeRemer, Staff Report, Nov. 14, 2024. Democrat Janelle Bynum has officially unseated GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer in Oregon’s 5th District, according to an Associated Press projection.

Chavez-DeRemer shocked in 2022 when she won the new district that was drawn to be a competitive lean seat for Democrats. This is the third time Bynum has beaten Chavez-DeRemer; they both competed for a seat in the Oregon state legislature over the past decade.

Bynum ran for the U.S. House seat in 2022 but lost in the primary. In this cycle, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) personally recruited Bynum, who said she would only run if he called her directly to make the ask, according to people familiar with the recruitment who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations.

This marks the Democrats’ fifth flip this cycle as they worked to regain districts they lost in the reliably liberal states of California, New York and Oregon. While Democrats will not have the House majority, these wins have made the Republican majority more narrow than the past term.

Relevant Recent Headlines

U.S. Election Surprises, Suspicions


greg palast vigilantesGreg Palast Investigates, Here's what we do now -- A personal note, Greg Palast and the Palast Investigations Team, Nov. 10, 2024. Lessons from the investigative documentary on voter suppression 'Vigilantes.Greg Palast Investigates, Here’s what we do now — A personal note, Greg Palast and the Palast Investigations Team, Nov. 10, 2024. Lessons from the investigative documentary on voter suppression ‘Vigilantes Inc..”

greg palast hsBeing right never felt so horrid.Before the election, I wrote, “How Trump Won.”And on Election night I waited for the returns to make a fool of me.

Instead, the returns made the fool a President.

And so, my vacation’s cancelled. My life’s cancelled; that is, a life of anything but sleuthing and exposing the details of the heist of our democracy.

What’s at stake?

No way around it, this is one frightening moment.

Did the voters or the vote challengers pick our next president?

Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction. Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealed — and civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty will be made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and howling anti-Semites will be appointed White House counselors.

But the horror we face is countered by this one hard question the US media will ignore, but I can’t: Did Donald Trump actually win this election? If so, was it really a landslide?

Here’s something you won’t read elsewhere: In the last Presidential, according to the official count of the federal Elections Assistance Commission, 2.7 million provisional ballots were rejected.

Whose ballots? If you’re Black, Hispanic or Asian-American, the chance you were shunted to one of these provisional ballots is 300% higher than if you’re white.

How many Black ballots were thrown in the electoral dumpster?

As a former professor of statistics, I know there’s still a lot of sleuthing in the numbers I have to do, but I can tell you this: The number of rejected provisional ballots, the number of voters wrongly purged from the rolls, the number of ballots “spoiled” and not counted, has unquestionably skyrocketed.

The result: This is the most “Jim Crow,” racially bent election I’ve covered in 25 years of reporting.

Did that make the difference? Don’t ask our “see-no-evil” media. While, before the election, The New York Times (never forget to capitalize the “The”) and MSNBC will run some stories on vote suppression trickery, from crazy ID requirements to rejecting student registrations to suspect purges of voters. However, the establishment outlets will NEVER, EVER say that these ugly, racist electoral swindles changed the outcome of the election.

They will wave the flag and tell us that American democracy prevailed again. That’s just horseshit. Excuse my French, but when are we going to face the fact that Jim Crow has returned — this time as Dr. James Crow, systems analyst.

In my film Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, I note that just one Trump-backed group, True the Vote, signed up a posse of 40,000 of self-proclaimed vote fraud hunters who, two months ago, had already challenged the ballots of 852,381 voters, overwhelmingly citizens of color — with a goal, undoubtedly met — of challenging 2 MILLION by this week.

Could disqualifying literally millions of ballots affect an election’s outcome? What do you think, Sherlock?

Vigilante challenges are a whole new racist weapon, new to 2024. It worked, so they’ll do it again in 2028 and 2032. They are already planning it. So, what are we going to do about it?

Same with mass purges: 400,000 in Georgia, 1.2 million in Texas — way over 10 million removed from the voter rolls — no other advanced nation does this, erasing voters’ rights to cast a ballot. And may I remind you, that in a technical report for the ACLU in which the Palast team’s experts literally reviewed every single name on the Georgia and Wisconsin purge lists, we found that Georgia wrongly removed a third of a million voters and Wisconsin tens of thousands.

Could this bend an election? Well, Sherlock, is the rancid evidence wafting up your nose yet?

Maybe what you smell are those rotting, “spoiled” ballots. The nasty little secret of US elections is that we don’t count all the votes. “Spoilage” is the fancy term in the vote-counting biz for votes that are rejected for all kinds of reasons, from paper ballots that scanners could not read to ballots cast in the wrong precinct.

Now, if voters’ spoiled ballots rejected were just a random thing, hey, it wouldn’t matter. But as I pointed out in The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, a Black voter is 700% more likely than a white voter to have their ballot thrown in the reject dumpster. We are talking about, by official count, one to three MILLION ballots in our last presidential elections. Do the math, Sherlock. If we counted all the votes, who really won?

What can we do now?

Cut the tears, crybabies. We have work to do.

In 2016, in Rolling Stone, I laid out, in cold numbers, how Trump “won” election through a racially poisonous voter roll purge system called, “Interstate Crosscheck,” which purported to identify and remove criminal double voters from the rolls. If a “James Brown” voted in Michigan and “James Brown” voted in North Carolina, they’d remove this criminal double voter from the rolls. Roughly 1.1 million voters were knocked off the rolls. Combined with the purges, spoilage, provisional ballots rejected and other scummy scams — easily accounted for Trump’s official victory.

But here is the good news to remember: A national campaign led by Rev. Jesse Jackson and boosted by the ACLU in court deploying our investigative findings, our films, and our reports completely eliminated the Crosscheck purge system. If we did not continue the battle for voter protection after the 2016 race, Biden could not have won in 2020.

And let me make this clear: Our purpose in taking on Crosscheck was not to elect Biden — I’m strictly non-partisan. Our purpose was and remains to let the voters decide.

Some weeks ago, Rev. Jackson told President Biden and VP Kamala Harris to watch our film Vigilantes Inc., and then take action. But still, the Justice Department hit the snooze button. What that tells us is that no government agency, no political party, is going to save our democracy. That’s completely on us. And that’s my commitment.

Will you join me?

Information and facts make a difference

greg palast movie posterToday, I’ll be on calls with voting rights attorneys and frontline activist groups preparing for the fierce fight to protect our votes. They are, as you can imagine, requesting our factual reports and findings — about the two-million-plus vigilante challenges, about purges, mail-in ballot rejections and more. And they need our film and print stories of the voters whose ballots were challenged, discarded, blocked. Our films and short PSA have now been seen by more than 8 million — but that’s not enough.

Too much has been spent on selling candidates and not enough on simple civic education. Education is our work.

With our investigative reports, with our hard and unassailable evidence, we can challenge the legitimacy of the Trump “landslide.” It’s not about bringing down Trump, it’s about shoring up that fragile thing called Democracy.

Starting TODAY, we must begin the difficult but necessary work of protecting and restoring voting rights. The 2026 election — and the threat of more purloined elections — is upon us.

Honestly and personally, I was hoping for some rest and time off.But a lifetime of your work and mine is now in the balance.

Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, “Billionaires & Ballot Bandits” and the book and documentary, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.” His latest film is “Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen,” which can be seen via a free streaming link here: https://www.gregpalast.com/vigilantes-inc-free-download/.

ny times logoNew York Times, Why Was There a Broad Drop-Off in Democratic Turnout in 2024? Michael C. Bender, Nov. 11, 2024.  Democrats failed to turn out to vote at the rate they did in 2020 when they ousted Donald Trump, according to an analysis of election data.

Voters in liberal strongholds across the country, from city centers to suburban stretches, failed to show up to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at the levels they had for Joseph R. Biden Jr. four years earlier, contributing significantly to her defeat by Donald J. Trump, according to a New York Times analysis of preliminary election data.

The numbers help fill in the picture of Mr. Trump’s commanding victory, showing it may not represent the resounding endorsement of his agenda that the final Electoral College vote suggests. Mr. Trump won the White House not only because he turned out his supporters and persuaded skeptics, but also because many Democrats sat this election out, presumably turned off by both candidates.

Counties with the biggest Democratic victories in 2020 delivered 1.9 million fewer votes for Ms. Harris than they had for Mr. Biden. The nation’s most Republican-heavy counties turned out an additional 1.2 million votes for Mr. Trump this year, according to the analysis of the 47 states where the vote count is largely complete.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘An Earthquake’ Along the Border: Trump Flipped Hispanic South Texas, J. David Goodman, Edgar Sandoval and Robert Gebeloff, Nov. 9, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump’s biggest gains were along the Texas border, a Democratic stronghold where most voters are Hispanic. He won 12 of the region’s 14 counties, up from five in 2016.

Nowhere in the United States have historically Democratic counties shifted so far and so fast in the direction of former President Donald J. Trump as they have in the Texas communities along the Rio Grande, where Hispanic residents make up an overwhelming majority.

texas mapIn recent elections, the region’s mix of sprawling urban centers and rural ranch lands that had been reliable Democratic strongholds for generations were beginning to turn red.

Then on Tuesday, Mr. Trump brought South Texas and the border region firmly into his column, taking 12 of the 14 counties along the border with Mexico, and making significant inroads even in El Paso, the border’s biggest city. In 2016, Mr. Trump carried only five of the counties.

djt maga hatThe support for Mr. Trump along the Texas border provided the starkest example of what has been a broad national embrace of the Republican candidate among Hispanic and working-class voters. That shift has taken place in rural communities as well as in large cities, like Miami, and in parts of New York and New Jersey.

But Texas stood out. Eight of the top 10 Democratic counties that most swung toward Mr. Trump on Tuesday were on the Texas border or within a short drive.

One of the biggest swings came in Starr County, a rural area of 65,000 people dotted with small towns where sections of border wall have been rising, incomes are low and many travel long distances to jobs in the West Texas oil fields. The county flipped Republican on Tuesday, backing Mr. Trump by about 16 percentage points. He lost the county to Hillary Clinton by 60 points in 2016.

washington post logoWashington Post, Democrats now hold 46 out of 100 seats in the Senate. 28 of those Democratic seats were not up for election this year, Nov. 11, 2024. Republicans are projected to win control of the Senate.

Republicans now hold 53 out of 100 seats in the Senate. 38 of those Republican seats were not up for election this year. 465053Dem.

Democrats now hold 203 out of 435 seats in the House. HouseRep.

Republicans now hold 212 out of 435 seats in the House. 2032182122024 turnout is near the 2020 record. See how each state compares.Votes are still being counted in some states, but those tabulated so far and expected totals show a range of turnout across states.2 minBy Luis Melgar, Dan Keatingand Alyssa FowersUpdated November 9, 2024 at 10:49 a.m. EST|Published November 6, 2024 at 10:35 a.m. EST

Voter turnout in this year’s presidential election is expected to be close to the record high set in 2020, according to a Washington Post analysis of data from the Associated Press and the University of Florida Election Lab.

Proof of Consequences, Vol. 2. Investigative Commentary: The 2024 U.S. Presidential Election Was Not Stolen, Seth Abramson, left, Nov. 9, 2024. America is no seth abramson graphiclonger a democracy — and it’s about to experience a fascist nightmare that will rock the world. But until Democrats abandon the false hope of election denialism, they can’t face any of it.

I’m as devastated by Vice President Kamala Harris’s loss in the 2024 U.S. presidential election as anyone—for more reasons than I can say or than most readers will know.

seth abramson proof logoPlease understand, I feel the very same pain many of you are feeling right now. And if you think it’s different for you than me—if you think you’re more at risk now of prison or physical harm or financial ruin or having your freedom to travel restricted than this author is, I can only say that you know less of my life and situation than you may think.

I’m going to go through what’s about to happen in America right along with everyone.

Which is why I want the current bout of election denialism racing throughout my party to conclude. It’s counter-productive, and it’s costing us precious hours that could be spent preparing our country for the all-out fascist assault it’s about to experience. All major-media reports indicating Trump may moderate himself in a second term must be ignored; I’m telling you as a Trump biographer who first correctly warned America about this man’s ultimate ambitions in 2015 that he will be a monster unleashed next year—and no one will get any quarter. He’ll destroy this once-great nation in ways you can’t even imagine, violating every aspect of our values and traditions along the way, and election denialism will do precisely nothing to stop any of it. With that in mind, this essay seeks to help expunge from Democratic politics a scourge it currently faces.

ny times logoNew York Times, Analysis: Drop-Off in Democratic Votes Ignites Conspiracy Theories on Left and Right, Stuart A. Thompson, Nov. 10, 2024 (print ed.). There is nothing suspicious about the shift in Democratic fortunes. But partisans from across the spectrum are questioning the results, for different reasons.

When President-elect Donald J. Trump was announced the winner of this year’s presidential contest on Wednesday, the vote tallies initially suggested a sharp drop-off of millions of Democratic votes compared with the results in 2020.

To some Republicans, that slump was evidence that the 2020 election had been fraudulent, that Democrats had somehow conjured millions of phantom votes that year — despite repeated confirmation from election officials, statewide audits and courts that nothing nefarious had occurred.

The shortfall also set off doubts among the internet’s left flank, but for different reasons. Hundreds of thousands of posts on social media implored Vice President Kamala Harris to avoid conceding over suspicions that millions of votes were somehow “missing” this year — despite assurances from federal agencies that the election was safe and secure.

Though it is unusual for opposing political camps to create conspiracy theories from the same material, supporters of both candidates have fixated on Democrats’ underperformance this year as a central narrative. The conversation online highlights the appeal that election fraud stories have to partisans of all stripes — especially those facing electoral defeat — and the power of social media to help those ideas go viral, despite ample evidence that the concerns are meritless.

Though election officials dealt with a variety of complications on Election Day this year, Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, concluded there was “no evidence of any malicious activity that had a material impact on the security or integrity of our election infrastructure.”

As more ballots were counted in the days since, estimates from The Associated Press suggest that the number of votes cast this year will be about 157.6 million, down about 700,000 from 2020. The gap between Mr. Trump and Ms. Harris has continued to narrow as more votes are counted in left-leaning states like California, Washington and Oregon, which take time to process mail ballots.

The right-leaning version of the conspiracy theory was shared by towering figures in conservative commentary, while the left-leaning version came from voters with much less reach.

ny times logoNew York Times, How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts, Steven Lee Myers and Julian E. Barnes, Nov. 8, 2024 (print ed.). The Kremlin did not bother to hide its efforts to influence the 2024 U.S. presidential election, as it did in the past.

Russian FlagIn the final days before Tuesday’s vote, Russia abandoned any pretense that it was not trying to interfere in the American presidential election.

The Kremlin’s information warriors not only produced a late wave of fabricated videos that targeted the electoral process and the Democratic presidential ticket but also no longer bothered to hide their role in producing them.

A fabricated interview claiming election fraud in Arizona was conducted by the director of a Kremlin think tank, Mira Terada, who returned to Russia in 2021 after serving a prison sentence in the United States for money laundering. Another video on Rumble, the video-sharing platform, targeted the Democratic vice-presidential nominee and featured John Mark Dougan, a former deputy sheriff from Florida who had previously denied working for the Kremlin’s propaganda apparatus.

What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain. There is no doubt, though, that it reflected an increasingly brazen effort by the Kremlin, one that has left the American government with little to do to except to rebut the falsehoods as they gain popularity. More than one official compared it to the arcade game Whac-a-Mole.

“That’s the thing — it feels so impotent,” said David Salvo, a former State Department official who is now managing the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “I mean, all we can do at the moment really is call it out.”

This year’s election underlined how much foreign interference — and disinformation generally — has become baked into American politics. Increasingly unfettered social media platforms like X and Telegram, along with the country’s constitutional protections of free speech, have opened the door for foreign influence, even if American law prohibits it.

“The flood of disinformation from Russian troll farms is just seemingly part of the overarching information environment,” said Chris Krebs, who served as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during President-elect Donald J. Trump’s first term, only to be fired when he called the last election fairly run.

For Russia’s leader, Vladimir V. Putin, the campaign was a risk, but clearly one he was willing to take. He has long brushed aside accusations of interference or interest in the outcome of American presidential politics — even joking at one point that he favored Vice President Kamala Harris. While many of Russia’s efforts presumably remain in the shadows, the ones made public as the campaign reached a climax left no plausible or even implausible deniability of Russia’s role.

Trump Prosecutions, Other Legal News

Donald Trump and Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2023. (Reuters photos of Donald Trump by Tasos Katopodis, left, and of Jack Smith by Kevin Wurm).Donald Trump and Special Counsel Jack Smith in 2023. (Reuters photos of Donald Trump by Tasos Katopodis, left, and of Jack Smith by Kevin Wurm).

ny times logoNew York Times, Jack Smith Plans to Step Down as Special Counsel Before Trump Takes Office, Devlin Barrett and Glenn Thrush, Nov. 13, 2024. The prosecutor who investigated and charged Donald J. Trump plans to finish his report and leave the job before he can be fired.

Jack Smith, the special counsel who pursued two federal prosecutions of Donald J. Trump, plans to finish his work and resign along with other members of his team before Mr. Trump takes office in January, people familiar with his plans said.

Mr. Smith’s goal, they said, is to not leave any significant part of his work for others to complete and to get ahead of the president-elect’s promise to fire him within “two seconds” of being sworn in.

Mr. Smith, who since taking office two years ago has operated under the principle that not even a powerful ex-president is above the law, now finds himself on the defensive as he rushes to wind down a pair of complex investigations slowed by the courts and ultimately made moot by Mr. Trump’s electoral victory.

Mr. Smith’s office is still drawing up its plan for how to end the cases, and it is possible that unforeseen circumstances — such as judicial rulings or decisions by other government officials — could alter his intended timeline. But Mr. Smith is trying to finish his work and leave before Mr. Trump returns to power, the people familiar with his plans said.

The election’s outcome spelled the end of the federal cases against Mr. Trump, since Justice Department policy has long held that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted for crimes. A Supreme Court ruling this summer significantly expanded the scope of official presidential conduct that cannot be prosecuted even after leaving office.

As he prepares for his last act as special counsel, Mr. Smith’s ultimate audience will not be a jury, but the public.

Department regulations call for him to file a report summarizing his investigation and decisions — a document that may stand as the final accounting from a prosecutor who filed extensive charges against a former president but never got his cases to trial.

It is not clear how quickly he can finish this work, leaving uncertain whether it could be made public before the Biden administration leaves office. But several officials said he has no intention of lingering any longer than he has to, and has told career prosecutors and F.B.I. agents on his team who are not directly involved in that process that they can start planning their departures over the next few weeks, people close to the situation said.

The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss personnel moves.

Mr. Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, is now a target of pro-Trump Republicans who portray him as the embodiment of a Democratic effort to use “lawfare,” the so-called weaponization of the Justice Department, to destroy Mr. Trump.

washington post logoWashington Post, Opinion As Jack Smith winds up his cases, Team Trump cranks up the retribution,ruth marcus twitter Custom Ruth Marcus, Nov. 10, 2024. All of this was predictable, but that does not make it any less chilling.

And so, it begins.

Elon Musk, the X owner and shadow president-elect, posted about the special counsel who prosecuted Donald Trump, “Jack Smith’s abuse of the justice system cannot go unpunished.” House Republicans are setting the stage for a probe into Smith’s conduct, warning against any “attempt to purge relevant records.”Sign up for the Prompt 2024 newsletter for answers to the election’s biggest questions

One unnamed Trump adviser suggested that Trump, seeking “vindication,” will not want to have the career lawyers who worked on Smith’s team continue to be employed at the Justice Department.

Justice Department log circularAnd Trump adviser Mike Davis raised the prospect of various forms of legal jeopardy for Smith. “There should be several investigations: House Judiciary, Senate Judiciary, DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility and a criminal probe,” he told The Post. Davis was more ominous in an interview with Newsmax, saying Smith “should go to prison for engaging in a criminal conspiracy against President Trump.”

All of this was predictable — Trump said last month that Smith “should be thrown out of the country” — but that does not make it any less chilling.

Smith moved last week to swiftly wrap up the election interference case against Trump. It can’t be continued, under long-standing Justice Department policy that prohibits prosecuting a sitting president, as Trump soon will be. (The Mar-a-Lago case, involving mishandling of classified documents and obstruction of justice, is similarly doomed when it comes to Trump, but more complicated because it involves two additional defendants.)

In an illustration that no good deed goes unpunished, Smith’s actions to wind down the prosecution are merely proof that he was motivated by partisan considerations all along.

“He kept saying that elections don’t matter,” Davis told a conservative website. “Then, ask this: If elections don’t matter why is he shutting down his investigation after this election? And it’s very clear that this was election interference.”

This would be laughable if it were not so scary. Smith’s actions demonstrate his commitment to following Justice Department policies and respecting the rule of law, not that he has suddenly lost interest in Trump now that he won. He is appropriately winding down the Jan. 6 case, in light of Trump’s election, and filing the concluding reports that are required under the special counsel regulations.

washington post logoWashington Post, Theodore Olson, conservative lawyer who backed marriage equality, dies at 84, Andrew Wolfson, Nov. 13, 2024. A longtime Republican who helped George W. Bush secure the presidency, he shocked many when he worked to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Theodore B. Olson, a conservative constitutional lawyer who argued the 2000 Florida vote-recount case that helped George W. Bush secure the presidency and, to much surprise, later joined forces with a liberal opponent from the election lawsuit in a successful effort to overturn California’s 2008 ban on same-sex marriage, died Nov. 13 at a hospital in Falls Church, Virginia. He was 84.

The death was announced by the law firm Gibson Dunn, where Mr. Olson was a partner. No cause was noted.

A legal luminary of the right, Mr. Olson spent most of his six-decade career as an appellate lawyer in private practice. He had two high-level government appointments — serving as assistant attorney general under President Ronald Reagan from 1981 to 1984 and solicitor general of the United States under Bush from 2001 to 2004. He was widely regarded as one of the top practitioners of his generation.

Mr. Olson appeared more than 60 times before the U.S. Supreme Court. He opposed race-based set-asides in federal contracting and college admissions, affirmed the freedom of the press and defended the young undocumented immigrants known as “dreamers.” What many of his arguments had in common was that they aligned with his libertarian brand of conservatism.

In 2000, the Republican Party tapped Mr. Olson to help Bush, then the Texas governor, in the legal battle following the closely fought election to determine the 43rd president of the United States.

The battle began with a wild election night in which TV networks called the key state of Florida for Vice President Al Gore, then for Bush, and then declared that the returns yielded no decisive result. In the confusion, Gore conceded the race but quickly retracted that concession.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Will the Supreme Court Stand Up to Trump? Can It? Stephen I. Vladeck (professor at Georgetown University Law Center), stephen vladeck resizedNov. 12, 2024. Because of all that has happened since President-elect Trump’s first term in office, it is easy to forget that the Supreme Court repeatedly stood up to him during those chaotic four years.

The court impeded Mr. Trump’s initial efforts to ban people from six Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States. It blocked Mr. Trump’s attempt to put a question on the 2020 census asking whether the respondent was a U.S. citizen. It rejected his effort to rescind the program that shields people brought to the United States as children from deportation and allows them to work. It ruled against him in a high-profile subpoena dispute. And it sat on its hands as Mr. Trump and his supporters tried to use the legal process to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump won some big cases, too, but his track record was surprisingly poor for a Republican president before a Supreme Court with a majority of Republican-appointed justices.

Now, with Republicans looking likely to control both chambers of Congress by the time Mr. Trump is inaugurated for his second term on Jan. 20, and with fewer moderating influences within Mr. Trump’s own party to restrain him, it seems inevitable that the court will once again be the last institution standing between Mr. Trump and whatever he wants to do.

The problem for the court — and for the Republic — is that it’s going to be much harder for the justices to push back this time around, even if they want to. That is because of the sharp decline in public support for the court, which has plummeted, no doubt in response not just to the justices’ controversial rulings, but also to the ethically questionable behavior of some of them. Without that public support, what would happen if Mr. Trump simply ignored a decision by the nation’s highest court that he doesn’t like? It is a question that until now seemed largely unthinkable.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

Yet the vice president-elect, JD Vance, suggested such a scenario in a 2021 interview in which he first said Mr. Trump should fire “every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.” And then he added: “When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.”

Although the Supreme Court’s formal power comes from Article III of the U.S. Constitution, its real power comes from public support for the court as an institution. The court depends upon the elected branches for everything from its budget to its building to its calendar and its statutory authority to hear almost all of the cases that it decides.

And as much as the court could not hear and decide cases without that support, what’s even more important is public support for its judgments — not necessarily because the public agrees with them, but because it agrees that, in our constitutional system, those judgments should be enforceable.

Regardless of whether, as Mr. Vance suggested, President Andrew Jackson actually said “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it,” it was President Dwight Eisenhower’s deployment of troops into Little Rock, Ark., that desegregated Central High School — not the court’s judgment in Brown v. Board of Education. Eisenhower chose to make sure the court’s mandate was honored.Editors’ Picks36 Hours in San FranciscoWeeds Are Everywhere. Why Aren’t We Eating Them More?What’s the Best Thing to Wear on a First Date?

Presidents unhappy with Supreme Court rulings have nevertheless complied with them historically because of the political consequences of not doing so (like President Richard Nixon after the Watergate tapes case or President George W. Bush after the Guantánamo habeas case held that the detainees there have a constitutional right to go to federal court to challenge their detention), and not because of anything that the court itself could do beyond issuing a paper judgment.

But the Supreme Court at the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second term looks very different from the Supreme Court at the end of his first term. This is the court that, in ideologically divided rulings, overruled Roe v. Wade, slammed the door on racial preferences in college admissions, greatly expanded the Second Amendment, kneecapped the administrative state and, perhaps most significantly, blessed stunningly broad presidential immunity from criminal prosecution in the specific case of Mr. Trump himself.

Whatever the merits of each or all of those rulings, what can’t be denied is that they have had a damaging effect on the court’s popularity — and, consequently, on the court’s ability to defy the wishes of the elected branches. Indeed, some surveys show public support for the court nearing a historic low. Data aside, there’s no question that the court has less credibility among large swaths of the population today than it did as recently as a decade ago.

And yet it’s easy to imagine circumstances in which defying the wishes of the elected branches will be more important in 2025 or 2026 than it was in 2017 or 2018. After all, the other political checks Mr. Trump faced during his first term — moderate Republican senators with decisive votes, like John McCain, or a Democratic-controlled House from 2019 through 2021 — are likely to be absent. Nor, assuming he abides by the 22nd Amendment limiting a president to two terms, does Mr. Trump have to worry about running for re-election.

Based on Mr. Trump’s first four years in the White House, it stands to reason that there will be at least some cases in which his behavior goes too far for a majority of the current court — just as there have been cases in which even this court has pushed back against the excesses of Republican governors or conservative lower courts. If the court rules against Mr. Trump and he tells the justices to pound sand, what will happen then?

ny times logoNew York Times, Airman in Leaked Documents Case Is Sentenced to 15 Years, Maya Shwayder and Eileen Sullivan, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). The disclosures that Jack Teixeira shared on a social media platform raised questions over how he had access to some of the country’s most sensitive secrets.

jack teixeiraJack Teixeira, right, a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of sharing classified government records online, was sentenced on Tuesday to 15 years in prison for one of the most damaging national security leaks in history.

“You are young and you have a future ahead of you, but it is such a serious crime,” the judge, Indira Talwani of Federal District Court in Massachusetts, told Airman Teixeira, who is 22.

The sentencing brings to an end a case that raised questions over how easily a relatively low-level member of the guard had obtained a top-secret clearance that gave him access to some of the country’s most sensitive secrets.

Airman Teixeira, who served as an information technology specialist at an air base on Cape Cod, shared the classified material that he had obtained on Discord, a social media platform popular among gamers. At one point, he acknowledged he had disclosed material that “I’m not supposed to.”

Among Airman Teixeira’s disclosures were details about supplying equipment to Ukraine, including how it would be transported and used. He posted a report on Russian and Ukrainian troop movements that American officials said might have compromised how the United States gathers intelligence. 

 Proof of Consequences, Investigative Commentary Vol. 1: Where America Goes Now, Seth Abramson, left, Nov. 9, 2024. Those who said Garland moved too slow were right. Those who said media soft-shoed Trump misconduct were right. Now we reap a whirlwind. How do we do that—and what obstacles are there? seth abramson graphicAnswers within.

Introduction: Proof must leave it to political operatives to determine what strategic or tactical errors by the 2024 Harris campaign may have led to a landslide victory for Donald Trump.

Perhaps there were few—or none. From the outside looking in, it seemed a well-run campaign that dealt admirably with trying circumstances. But again, that analysis will ultimately will be the province of self-interested political consultants—who get paid to pretend they always knew better than anyone else in Washington in an election year.

seth abramson proof logoJust so, it will be political operatives, not journalists like this author, spending the coming months and years trying to figure out new approaches to reconnecting with voters who formerly comprised the Obama Coalition and then the Biden Coalition.

But it certainly has been the work of this publication—for many years—to detail the political scandals of Donald Trump. And now that work is no longer as interesting or useful or relevant as it once was. Not because Trump winning an election should earn him largesse or leash from journalists, but because American voters just resoundingly declared via their ballots that nothing Trump says or does really matters to them at all.

Criminal convictions don’t matter. Adjudications of rape don’t matter. Allegations of sexual assault and sexual harassment—twelve of them, then twenty-four, then thirty-six—don’t matter. Neither the theft nor the illegal retention of classified documents matters, even when the thief makes clear he intends to sell American secrets to the highest bidder. Divulging U.S. classified intelligence to Kremlin agents in the White House? Fine. Divulging classified intelligence to a murderous Saudi prince (MBS) so he can execute or imprison his enemies, many of them U.S. allies? Have at it. If you like, you can even meet with Vladimir Putin with only a Kremlin translator—with not a single notetaker—at a time your Director of National Intelligence, Republican Dan Coats, is privately saying Putin is blackmailing you into betraying America at every turn. You can deliberately use non-secure phones contrary to the unambiguous advice of our intelligence agencies, openly accept FSB intelligence over CIA intelligence, and stash away burner phones that you hide from almost everyone. You can immolate, flush, or even consume important presidential records on a regular basis that would otherwise be discoverable in FOIA requests. Even if the shell game you played with the FBI to keep it from learning you absconded from D.C. with a massive cache of top-secret docs played out like a Bugs Bunny-style criminal caper and spree, that’s fine.

Nobody cares.

Inciting an armed rebellion against the United States doesn’t matter.

Telling over 31,000 lies to voters during one’s first term as president doesn’t matter.

Overcharging taxpayers for use of your properties—sometimes by 5x pr more—just to enrich yourself, despite (a) you already being a “billionaire” and (b) regularly claiming that being president is costing you money is a “no worries” situation, as is using those same properties to take positively oodles of shady coin from all of America’s enemies.

Open racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, and transphobia don’t matter, nor does ableism, classism, Christofascism, the hatred of all Latinos or a desperate love for all autocrats the world over. None of that matters at all.

Selling America’s foreign policy to the highest bidder and mishandling a pandemic to the tune of hundreds of thousands of needless American dead doesn’t matter. None of our dead matter; in fact, it’s like their deaths never happened at all, and there were no scientific studies confirming that if Trump hadn’t been POTUS all of them would still be alive.

Even openly lusting after one’s own daughter is now a fine thing for a politician to do.

Or admitting to aiding a coverup of the gruesome murder of a beloved Washington Post journalist.

Violations of the Logan Act? No problem. Emoluments Clause violations? Don’t you worry about it. The Hatch Act? What even is that? Pardoning all your co-conspirators in a criminal case, then firing the prosecutor in all your own pending criminal cases?

That sounds fine.

As do two impeachments, hidden tax records, doctored medical files, and the single most corrupt presidential administration since the administration of Ulysses Grant (who, unlike Trump, was not actually such a bad president himself). Did I mention that nonpartisan historians agree that Trump is the worst president in American history?

Worse than presidents who tried to sell out the Union to the Confederacy in advance and then after the fact in the mid-nineteenth century?

Well, that happened too—and also doesn’t matter.

All of this, and several mountains of misconduct more, isn’t just fine to U.S. voters but to U.S. media, which got so bored with referencing the fact that Trump was (and is) an adjudicated rapist that it just stopped noting it anywhere. It had the same reaction to Trump’s nearly three dozen felony convictions, which were apparently so boring to professional journalists that the day after he won the 2024 U.S. presidential election in a landslide CNN described Donald Trump as merely a “criminal defendant,” not a criminal. (He’s not only a convicted criminal, he could properly be termed a serial felon.)

Major media in the United States habitually balks at referencing older news reports or reports from other media outlets, even when and as recent or older history is clearly desperately relevant to currently unfolding events, so each fresh Trump outrage over the last decade effectively erased all the others in stateside reporting—because that’s how corporate journalism in this century works, and because that’s how corporate journalism will continue to work. (Also, because that’s how Donald Trump crimes.)

There’ll be no self-analysis by media at all in the wake of the 2024 election, and why should there be? It’s much easier to Monday-morning quarterback the Democratic Party—a pastime that will now become corporate media’s full-time occupation—even as that’s not something Proof has much interest in doing here. American voters just knowingly voted for a fascist, racist, and rapist in the midst of a booming economy, falling crime rates, and lowered border crossings due to an executive order from a Democratic president handed a crappy economy by a Republican one; what does any of that have to do with Democratic voters or the Democratic Party? What does U.S. media think that the Democrats should have done here? Not saved the economy after Trump finally left the White House, a trail of innocent January 6 blood behind him? Not sought a bipartisan border deal? Not presided over a massive reduction in national crime rates? Should President Joe Biden have raped dozens of women and then stolen classified documents, secretly conspiring with our enemies all the while? Or should he have gleefully launched a bloody armed rebellion against our federal government?

Did Biden not lie enough? Not incite violence enough? Not assess the fuckability of his own daughters enough? Was his hair too real? His skin too skin-colored? His tie an appropriate length? How exactly does nonpartisan historians ranking Biden as the 14th-best POTUS ever encourage us to go with what Joe Rogan says of him, instead?

Either Americans voted for Trump because they are bad, selfish people who do not deserve forgiveness from good, patriotic ones. or Americans voted for Trump because major media saw no profit—literal or figurative—in reporting on the man as robustly and aggressively as it should have. Hell, the corporate media gave Maggie Haberman, the daughter of Trump’s publicist, a Pulitzer Prize for her access journalism inside in Team Trump, which saw her regularly reporting out lies that camp needed seeded in American society so she could glean one or two meaningless news morsels from her friends-cum-sources per month. None of this has anything to do with the Democratic Party or Democratic voters or, for that matter, Donald Trump being anything like an acceptable choice for leadership in any healthy democracy. Which, of course, America is not—it is now a failed democracy that’s peopled by MAGA fascists and the fascist-curious, corporate-media hacks and their billionaire overlords, and certain feckless judges and prosecutors at the federal and state levels whose tip-toeing prosecutions of Trump and his cronies turned out to be just as cowardly and tardy and half-assed and incomplete and borderline apologetic to their targets as Trump critics always insisted.

But the message American voters just sent is actually much more complicated and contemptible then mere nihilism or moral vacuity.

The Weekend Wrap, White Collar Law Commentary: The Final Weekend Wrap, Randall Eliason, right, Nov. 10, 2024. But Sidebars will go on.

It’s a wrap for The Weekend Wrap. Now that the election is behind us, I’m going to be posting less frequently. My wife and I are heading into retirement next year and I plan to spend more time on travel, visiting my grandchildren, and other activities. I will still post here occasionally on various white collar topics but it won’t be on a regular schedule.

A key focus of The Weekend Wrap has been a weekly update on the various Trump prosecutions. As I explained in this post last week, all of those cases are now going away, one way or another:

To that point: on Friday, Judge Chutkan in D.C. granted Jack Smith’s request to vacate all current filing deadlines and pause the case while he and the Justice Department figure out what to do next. He is to file a report with her by December 2. But as I discussed in that post, the federal prosecutions of Trump are dead — the only unknown is the details of the funeral arrangements. As for the state prosecutions, worst case is they are dead as well, and the very best case is that they are delayed for four years.

I’m sure Trump and his administration will continue to be a great source of material for a writer about white collar crime. But there will no longer be a need for a regular weekly report on his criminal cases.

Notice to paid subscribers: Thank you so much for your support, I’m very grateful. But as I won’t be posting regularly, I don’t feel right asking people to pay to subscribe. I am turning off the “paid subscriber” option and over the next week I will be converting all paid subscriptions to free ones. If you paid on an annual basis, you should receive a pro-rata refund. Please let me know if you have any questions or trouble in that regard.

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Thank you for your loyalty and support! I hope you will continue to enjoy Sidebars. As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions about the blog or potential topics.

All the best, Randall Thank you again for being a paid subscriber to Sidebars. I’m grateful for your support!

@donwinslow via X, Opinion: When will Democrats realize that it took 6 months just to form the J-6 committee and 9 months from J-6 before a single subpoena went out?, Don Winslow, Nov. 10, 2024. It was a full year, per Wash Post, that Garland+Justice Dept delayed even the start of prosecuting Trump. Unforgivable dereliction of duty.

washington post logoWashington Post, Trump allies push to punish Jack Smith in first test of retribution vow, Isaac Arnsdorf, Perry Stein, Josh Dawsey and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov.  8, 2024. Even as Jack Smith took steps to wind down his Jan. 6 election interference case against Trump, Elon Musk said the special counsel “cannot go unpunished.”

Even as Jack Smith moved to wind down his federal election interference case against Donald Trump on Friday, House Republicans took an initial step toward investigating the special counsel, setting up an early test of how the president-elect’s calls for retribution will play out.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia) asked Smith’s office to preserve all records of the historic classified document and election interference probes, a routine first step in congressional inquiries, law enforcement investigations and litigation. Elon Musk, the X owner who spent more than $100 million boosting Trump’s campaign, responded to the House Republicans’ letter by posting, “Jack Smith’s abuse of the justice system cannot go unpunished.”

Trump vowed repeatedly on the campaign trail to stop Smith’s prosecutions and use a return to power to turn federal law enforcement against President Joe Biden and other critics, Democrats and former advisers. He argued without evidence that the federal indictments he faced were politically motivated. In the final weeks of the campaign, Trump said he would quickly remove Smith and suggested deporting him.

“He should be thrown out of the country,” Trump said Oct. 24 on “Cats & Cosby,” a conservative radio talk show..

A Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail the thinking of the president-elect and his team, said Trump and his team would react extremely poorly if Smith tries to do anything else publicly. The next Justice Department will look “critically” at what Smith’s team did over the past couple of years to “make sure nothing like this ever happens again,” the person said.

The adviser said that Trump has shown a particular interest in who becomes attorney general because of the cases, and he wants “vindication” on all of them. The person said that it would be unlikely a Trump Justice Department would want to employ prosecutors from Smith’s office who investigated Trump.

Smith’s team included veteran national security prosecutors who had spent years at the Justice Department. They secured grand jury indictments charging Trump with hoarding classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, and illegally trying to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Spokesmen for Musk and Trump did not respond to requests for comment.

Since this week’s election, Smith has signaled that he plans to wind down the cases against Trump and focus on completing a final report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, rather than pushing ahead with the prosecutions until the inauguration and forcing a confrontation with the incoming administration.

Smith is assessing how he wants to proceed with the case now that Trump is expected to be sworn in as president on Jan. 20, the special counsel and his team told a federal judge in a filing Friday. Justice Department policy would not allow for the prosecution of a sitting president. U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan responded by granting Smith’s request to suspend all remaining deadlines in the case Friday.

Jordan and Loudermilk’s letter to Smith suggested that Smith’s office might respond to the election by purging records, warning, “The Office of Special Counsel is not immune from transparency or above accountability for its actions.” The lawmakers, both staunch Trump supporters, repeated an earlier request for Smith to turn over records about his communications with Garland, his hiring decisions and the court-approved search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August 2022.

Trump’s attorneys have criticized Smith’s prosecutions as unjustified and political in legal filings, but have not alleged that he committed a crime.

A spokesman for Smith declined to comment.

Even though Justice Department policy offers no path for the federal probes to continue, Trump adviser Mike Davis seized on Smith’s efforts to wind them down in the wake of Trump’s victory as evidence of “election interference.”

Davis said he hopes the multiple branches of the government go after Smith. “There should be several investigations: House Judiciary, Senate Judiciary, DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility and a criminal probe,” he said.

The pressure on Smith resembles Trump’s and his allies’ previous drives to retaliate against criminal and congressional investigations of Trump.

The GOP has largely followed the playbook of examining and interrogating investigators’ methods over the past two years to discredit and undermine prosecutors who have brought charges against Trump. House Republicans also demanded recordings from the district attorneys in Manhattan and Atlanta who separately prosecuted Trump, and from former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

When Republicans won the House in 2022, Trump wanted them to reopen the work of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy shared additional surveillance footage with a documentary team led by right-wing host Tucker Carlson.

The threat to Smith is different, however, because the Trump administration is likely to cooperate with undermining him, said Philip Allen Lacovara, a former deputy solicitor general and special counsel to the Watergate special prosecutor. Historically, Lacovara said, the Justice Department has resisted congressional second-guessing of its investigations, arguing that the agency has to protect the executive branch’s independence and the secrecy of grand jury materials.

“This administration, however, I suspect will be quite willing to disregard the traditional Justice Department protections for the integrity of investigations and will basically pull down their trousers and expose everything Smith did as part of their effort to blacken the investigation,” he said. “The gloves are off in Congress, and I suspect whoever is appointed attorney general by President Trump will not have the same institutional commitment to the autonomy and integrity of the Justice Department as even the leadership during Trump I.”

But Democrats in Congress on Friday welcomed Jordan’s missive, arguing that laying bare Smith’s work will only highlight wrongdoing by Trump. Democratic staffers involved with congressional investigations said it’s likely that Jordan and committee investigators will call on Smith to testify, as they have in the past, as a part of the investigation — a prospect they welcome.

“That’s exactly the hearing Democrats would have had in the majority,” one of the staffers said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks. “Why would you call in Jack Smith to do the trial of the century but in Congress? It’s a gift to Democrats. … Call him in three times. That seems great.”

In its filing to Chutkan on Friday, Smith’s team said it needed to assess how to proceed with the case, which accused Trump of trying to interfere with the 2020 election results, now that he is returning to the White House.

Chutkan quickly granted that request and ordered prosecutors to file a report by Dec. 2 explaining how they want to proceed.

The case is still far from a potential trial, and Chutkan is determining what allegations in the superseding indictment may still be prosecuted after the Supreme Court ruled this summer that presidents enjoy broad immunity.

Smith also indicted Trump in Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents and thwarting officials’ attempts to retrieve them. That case was dismissed by a Trump-appointed federal judge, who broke with legal precedent to find that Smith was unlawfully appointed.

Smith is appealing that ruling, but Trump’s return to power could affect that effort as well.

Smith’s options include preparing a final report for public disclosure or dismissing both cases so that they can be revived after Trump’s second term ends, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.

If he terminates the criminal cases soon enough, Smith could deliver a final report detailing the findings of his two probes to Garland before Trump becomes the next president. A final report would allow Smith to “share with the public his evidence of Trump’s crimes,” McQuade said. “Members of Congress should be careful what they ask for.”

Smith could then resign as special counsel before Trump has a chance to make good on his promises to fire him.

Garland has previously said that he would make special counsel reports public if they reached his desk, though he has not indicated specifically what he would do if Smith gave him such a report now.

Were Smith to press forward into a Trump administration, the president or his attorney general could fire him and order the Justice Department to drop the prosecution.

Trump also faces two criminal cases in state courts in New York and Georgia. In May, a New York jury convicted Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress. He is appealing that conviction and attempting to get his November sentencing postponed.

In Georgia, Trump faces charges related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in the state. That case has been on pause for months after Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis was accused of having an inappropriate romantic relationship with an outside lawyer she hired to lead the prosecution.

Even if the Georgia case does move forward, it probably won’t go to trial for years — if at all.

Politico, Lawyer linked to Trump’s transition defends Trump’s right to dictate Justice Department actions, Josh Gerstein, Nov. 9, 2024. GOP attorney Mark Paoletta says history and law support any president’s authority to start or stop criminal probes.

politico CustomA prominent Washington lawyer involved in President-elect Donald Trump’s planning for the Justice Department is defending Trump’s right to dictate who gets investigated and perhaps even who gets charged by the law enforcement agency.

Mark Paoletta, who served as legal counsel to Vice President Mike Pence and later to the Office of Management and Budget in the first Trump administration, argued Thursday there’s no legal requirement for any president to stay out of Justice Department decisions.

“He has the duty to supervise DOJ, including, if necessary, on specific cases,” Paoletta wrote on X. “Our system does not permit an unaccountable agency. As Chief Justice Roberts held in U.S. v. Trump, ‘the constitution vests the entirety of the executive power in the President.’”

Paoletta noted that in 1984 President Ronald Reagan shut down a grand jury antitrust investigation into British airlines and in 1992 President George H.W. Bush urged the Justice Department to intensify its investigation into the Los Angeles police officers involved in beating motorist Rodney King.

However, those instances have been rare exceptions since the 1970s, when targeting of political opponents by President Richard Nixon and revelations of FBI abuses of the civil liberties of civil rights activists led to policies that sought to wall off the White House from civil and criminal enforcement actions overseen by the Justice Department. Since President Jimmy Carter, officials from every administration — including Trump’s first one — have issued memos limiting such contacts.

POLITICO reported last week that Paoletta is helping Trump’s transition team plan Justice Department policies.

While asserting Trump’s right to direct DOJ, Paoletta sought to offer reassurance that the once-and-future president won’t use that power to persecute his enemies.

“Trump will not use the DOJ for political purposes, that is to go after individuals simply because they are political opponents,” Paoletta wrote. “But just because you are a political opponent does not give you … a free pass if you have violated the law.”

During the just-completed presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly suggested he would use the legal system to retaliate against his enemies.

Paoletta said he wrote the post in his role as a senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, a think tank that is home to several pro-Trump scholars. He didn’t comment on his role on the transition.

Politico, Trump’s victory could end Eric Adams’ legal troubles, Joe Anuta and Jeff Coltin, Nov. 8, 2024. The president-elect has trashed an indictment facing the New York City mayor — and will soon replace the prosecutor handling the case.Eric Adams arrives for a court hearing.

politico CustomPresident-elect Donald Trump’s victory is good news for New York City Mayor Eric Adams as he battles federal corruption charges.

Not only has Trump spoken disparagingly about the case — comparing it to his own federal criminal charges — he is almost certain to replace the person prosecuting Adams, a switch that stands to benefit the Democratic mayor tremendously.

“If [the case] is nonsense the way President Trump’s case was — and maybe that’s why he has been showing sympathy — then I’m sure [Trump] would be helpful,” billionaire and radio personality John Catsimatidis, who has supported both Trump and Adams, said in an interview.

trump 2024Any influence on the case from Trump, however, would prove toxic in a New York City Democratic primary, which Adams still plans to compete in next year as he seeks reelection. Rivals have already pounced on Adams for what they view as his cozying up to the president-elect.

“New Yorkers need someone who will make the city and the state a beacon of hope in an otherwise despairing time,” far-left mayoral candidate and state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani said in an interview, discussing Adams’ relationship with Trump. “And to be worthy of hope it means, at the very least, you call out that which is creating despair. Not aligning yourself with it.”

In late September, prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office indicted Adams on five counts, including accepting bribes from figures connected to the Turkish government. The stakes for the outspoken mayor are high: A conviction could result in up to 45 years in prison should he be found guilty on all counts.

Not only could Trump alter the way federal prosecutors handle the case, he could pardon Adams should they convict him. | Evan Vucci/AP

But because of Adams’ soft touch with Trump throughout the campaign — and his reluctance to align himself with Vice President Kamala Harris — several avenues for absolution have opened up. Not only could Trump alter the way federal prosecutors handle the case, he could pardon Adams should they convict him.

While Trump has consistently threatened to turn the justice system against his Democratic rivals, a favorable decision toward Adams would nevertheless continue a pattern of granting clemency to political figures across the aisle. Trump commuted the sentences of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who both had been convicted of public corruption.

After speaking with Trump this week, Adams said during a Thursday television interview they did not discuss his criminal case and dodged a question on whether he hoped Trump would intervene.

“I’ve been extremely clear that I’ve done nothing wrong, and I have competent attorneys that are going to handle that case,” the mayor said.

His trial is set to begin in April, just two months before New York City’s Democratic primary. And while Trump could always issue a pardon if the mayor is convicted, there are ways to help him beforehand.

djt cheyneyPolitico, Trump promised to get revenge. Here are his targets, Josh Gerstein, Nov. 7, 2024 (print ed.).  From Liz Cheney, right, to Jack Smith to Mark Milley, Trump has a liz cheney screengrab capitollengthy inventory of people he’s pledged to punish.

Donald Trump ran a campaign based on retribution. Now he is perfectly positioned to carry it out.

politico CustomFor years, Trump has peppered his speeches and social media posts with vengeful calls for his political opponents, his critics and members of the media to be prosecuted, locked up, deported and even executed. In the waning weeks of the 2024 campaign, he escalated those promises of retaliation to a fever pitch.

Now that he’s won, he has both a popular mandate — and the power — to begin implementing his platform of punishment.

Many Trump supporters dismissed the threats as campaign rhetoric aimed at whipping up his base. They noted that his exhortations against his enemies only rarely led to action during his first four years in office.

But others — including some of Trump’s closest advisers — have warned ominously that he’s far more likely to follow through in a second term. He won’t be inhibited by the need to run for reelection. He will be emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling that grants presidents broad immunity from criminal accountability after they leave office. And he is expected to be surrounded by aides more willing to dispense with norms to carry out his wishes.

washington post logoWashington Post, As Trump wins White House, special counsel weighs how to end trials, Perry Stein, Shayna Jacobs, Holly Bailey and Spencer S. Hsu, Nov. 7, 2024 (print ed.).Jack Smith could wind down two federal prosecutors of the former and future president and submit a report to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

ICE logoAs Donald Trump clinched his resounding presidential victory early Wednesday, the four criminal cases against him seemed to begin their march to dissolution.

The election win prompted special counsel Jack Smith to start discussing how to wind down the two federal prosecutions of the president-elect, according to a person familiar with the internal deliberations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. One case accuses Trump of hoarding highly classified documents after leaving the White House; the other charges him with trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.

In New York, meanwhile, Trump’s lawyers were expected to try to delay his upcoming sentencing in state court on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress.

The possible slowing down of the federal cases — which could in theory barrel forward until Inauguration Day — could give Smith time to deliver a final report detailing the findings of his two probes to Attorney General Merrick Garland before Trump becomes the 47th president.

Garland has indicated that he would make special counsel reports public if they reached his desk.

A Trump campaign spokesman said Trump’s victory at the polls shows that Americans believe the cases against him are political.

“It is now abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system, so we can, as President Trump said in his historic speech last night, unify our country and work together for the betterment of our nation,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement Wednesday.

Smith must also weigh how to proceed with his appeal of U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’s decision to dismiss the Florida classified-documents case. The judge, a Trump appointee, ignored decades of legal precedent to rule that Smith’s appointment was unlawful.

Justice Department officials have expressed concern that Cannon’s decision could jeopardize not just future special counsels but any federal prosecutor or senior official serving in a temporary position, The Washington Post reported in August.

Dropping the appeal may not be a simple decision for Smith, because prosecutors want the decision overturned not only to resurrect the case but also to protect Justice Department appointments during the Trump administration and beyond.

Trump’s four criminal cases, including a state election-obstruction case in Georgia, were brought within months of one another in 2023.

They initially seemed as if they could jeopardize his chances of being elected again to public office. But Trump denied wrongdoing in every case, insisting that the charges were proof that the government was trying to hurt him politically. Soon, his support skyrocketed. Republican elected officials rallied around him, echoing his claims that the justice system was “rigged.”

Trump’s lawyers filed every possible appeal and sought delays wherever they could, at times citing his presidential campaign as a reason he could not meet court deadlines or attend proceedings. They succeeded in pushing all but the New York trial past the presidential election, in the process winning a landmark Supreme Court ruling that greatly expanded presidential immunity and narrowed the federal election-interference case in D.C.

As Trump prepares to return to the White House, each of the criminal cases is in jeopardy.

Trump is scheduled to go before New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan on Nov. 26 to learn his punishment in the hush money trial, which some experts have said would be unlikely to include jail time — even if he had lost the election. His election victory could make it harder to impose any sentence, even probation.

Sidebars, White Collar Law Commentary: The Rule of Law Was On the Ballot. It Lost, Randall Eliason, randall eliasonright, Nov. 7, 2024. The justice system and the rule of law were on the ballot on Tuesday. They lost.

Never in our history has a criminal defendant had the power to end his own prosecutions. The idea that a defendant could be judge and jury in his own case is repugnant to the rule of law. But that’s precisely what happened with Trump’s victory.

Our justice system requires that all are equal before, and governed by, the law. There isn’t one set of rules for the rich, white, and powerful, and a different set for everyone else. Prosecutions are not based on political considerations and the criminal justice system is not used as a political weapon.

Justice Department log circularThese are not mere platitudes; they are fundamental to our democracy. To be sure, these ideals have been applied imperfectly throughout our history. We sometimes fall short. But until recently there was at least agreement, across both political parties, as to their critical importance. That changed with the rise of Donald Trump.

Regardless of the outcome, Tuesday’s election was going to make history. If Harris won, we would have had the first womanpresident and first with both black and Asian heritage. With Trump’s victory, we have the first president facing criminal indictments and who is already a felon.

Trump’s victory means he is unlikely to be held accountable for any of his alleged criminal misconduct. That’s a severe blow to the ideal of the rule of law. As a former prosecutor, it both saddens and infuriates me. And a second Trump presidency imperils other fundamental aspects of our justice system as well. Donald Trump’s victory speech (full text) | CNN Politics

Trump making his victory speech on election nightThe Federal Criminal Cases

merrick garlandSpecial counsel Jack Smith has brought two federal indictments against the former president. The case in Florida, charging Trump with improper retention of classified materials and obstruction of justice, easily could have gone to trial by last spring. But a Trump-appointed and Trump-friendly judge dragged her heels, taking months to make relatively routine decisions, and then dismissed the case altogether. Smith’s appeal of that dismissal is pending.

The D.C. federal case charges Trump with conspiracy and obstruction of justice for seeking to overturn the 2020 election. Timely prosecution of that case was derailed by the battles over presidential immunity, which are ongoing in the wake of the Supreme Court’s misguided immunity decision.

The justice system has been severely tested by these cases and the unique challenges of prosecuting a former president. Trump’s success in delaying the prosecution of both cases until after the election is a failure of that system. But with time the dismissal of the Florida case likely would have been reversed, and the D.C. case was slogging ahead as the judge worked to resolve the immunity issues. Justice for Trump in these cases had been delayed, but it had not yet been denied.

But now, as president, Trump will have the power to have both cases dropped. He has already promised to fire Jack Smith “within two seconds” if elected. Trump can order his acting attorney general to fire Smith, drop the appeal in Florida, dismiss the D.C. case, and dissolve the special counsel’s office. There will be nothing to stop him.

The special counsel regulations provide that the attorney general may fire a special counsel only for “misconduct, dereliction of duty, incapacity, conflict of interest, or for other good cause.” But assuming Trump and his new attorney general even care about following the regulations, which they probably won’t, they could simply say that the “good cause” is their determination that the prosecutions were legally inappropriate.

The federal prosecutions are dead. There’s no question about it.What Smith Could Do Prior to the Inauguration

Trump may not need to bother getting rid of the special counsel himself. There are already news reports that Smith is in consultation with the Justice Department about how to wind down his cases before Trump is inaugurated. Reportedly this is based on the longstanding DOJ policy that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted.

Rather than dismiss the cases altogether, Biden’s DOJ presumably could say they are just pausing prosecution of the cases until Trump is out of office. Of course, Trump’s DOJ would then dismiss them as soon as he is in office – but there’s no reason Biden needs to do that for him. I say make Trump take the political heat (if any) for dismissing his own prosecutions.

There’s also the matter of Trump’s two co-defendants in the Florida case. Theoretically those prosecutions could continue without Trump. But of course, once in office Trump will simply order the cases dismissed and/or pardon his co-defendants. But again, I don’t see the need to do that for him by dismissing the cases prior to his inauguration.

If Smith were ever planning to indict Trump’s co-conspirators in the D.C. case, he could do that now as well. That would get it on the public record that the grand jury believed they deserved to be indicted. Once again, once Trump is in office he will simply have the cases dismissed and/or pardon the defendants. But if there are charges that Smith intended to bring, why not bring them now to inform the public and make Trump take the political heat for having them dropped?

Finally, the special counsel regulations provide that a special counsel must submit a confidential report to the attorney general when he concludes his work. I’m hoping Smith will spend the next two months writing a report for Merrick Garland. Garland can then make the report public, as has been done with other special counsel reports. I don’t know how much more information would be in the report that we don’t already know, but it could be considerable. At least such a report would fully document the charges and evidence for historical purposes.The State Criminal Cases

Trump will have somewhat less control over his state prosecutions but will still be able to avoid any accountability. In New York, he has been found guilty on thirty-four felony counts of making false business records. He has moved to dismiss the case based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, and Judge Merchan said he will decide that motion by November 12. Assuming he does not dismiss the case, sentencing is set for November 26.

Even if Merchan sentences Trump to prison time, he would almost certainly allow him to remain free pending appeal. If the convictions are upheld on appeal, the execution of that sentence would at a minimum have to be postponed until he was out of office in 2029. A state will not be allowed to jail the sitting president.

Trump’s attorneys are reportedly preparing to argue that the case should be dismissed entirely, based on Trump’s election, or at the very least that sentencing should be postponed until he is out of office. His former attorney general Bill Barr released a statement calling on all the federal and state prosecutors to dismiss all the cases immediately. Barr argues the people have spoken and have chosen Trump to lead the country despite knowing about the criminal cases, and for the good of the country it is now time to drop the prosecutions.

This all puts Judge Merchan in an interesting and difficult spot. I’m not sure what he will do. I doubt that DA Bragg will be moved by arguments that he should dismiss the case. But again, even if Merchan moves forward with sentencing, enforcing that sentence — whether it’s prison, home detention, community service, or fines — will have to wait until appeals are exhausted and Trump is out of office.

In the Georgia prosecution Trump was charged along with eighteen other defendants for seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in that state. Georgia prosecutors have done a pretty good job on their own of helping Trump avoid his day in court. The unwieldy case is currently bogged down over appeals resulting from the DA’s alleged conflict of interest based on her romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor she hired for the case. This “own goal” by the DA led to substantial delays and no trial date is in sight.

If the case ever gets to trial — which may be a big if — Georgia will not be allowed to include the sitting president in that trial. It could, however, proceed with the prosecution of the other defendants, and Trump should not be able to stop it. That would at least provide another public airing of the efforts of Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and the other co-conspirators to overturn the 2020 election, even if Trump is not at the defense table. Theoretically Trump could then be tried alone after he leaves office, but who knows how much appetite there would be at that point to try a ten-year-old case a second time.Weaponizing the Justice System

Another fundamental principle of the rule of law is that criminal prosecutions are walled off from political considerations. Under the Biden administration, for example, that meant indictments and prosecutions of prominent Democrats such as former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, Congressman Henry Cuellar, and New York City mayor Eric Adams proceeded, with no interference from the White House. This is also why investigation and prosecution of Trump was handed over to a special counsel once Trump declared his candidacy, to provide an additional layer of insulation from politics.

Harris, herself a former prosecutor, recognizes the bedrock importance of this principle. So does President Biden, who refused to intervene even in the politically-motivated prosecution of his own son. (Can you imagine President Trump allowing a prosecution of Don Jr. to proceed?)

A second Trump presidency threatens the rule of law in yet another way. The principle that no one is above the law was dealt a severe blow by the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity. That damage unfortunately has already been done, by a Court majority that included Trump’s three appointees.

In his second term, Trump will have the opportunity to appoint many more judges to the federal bench. Supreme Court justices Alito and Thomas may retire to allow Trump to replace them with younger, stalwart conservatives. This will mean more judges who are more concerned with expanding Executive power and cutting back on government than with preserving the rule of law. Trump will have the opportunity to leave his lawless imprint on the judiciary for decades.Where We Go From Here

Trump’s victory leaves us with a president who knows he will enjoy immunity for many of his lawless actions — a very dangerous situation when that president is Trump. He has managed to avoid accountability for his own past criminal behavior. He may fulfill his pledges to pardon the Capitol rioters and other supporters while using the criminal justice system to punish political opponents. And with a Republican Senate happy to cooperate, he can further stack the federal courts with judges who will bend to his will.

These are characteristics of authoritarian regimes, not the United States of America.

I’m sorry to sound so dark, but this was a dark day for the rule of law. Something fundamental to our country and our democracy was lost on Tuesday. The task now is to work to see if we can get it back.

Emptywheel, Analysis: When Special Counsels Finish Up, They Must Write Reports, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Nov. 6, 2024. A bunch of outlets are marcy wheelerreporting that, given Trump’s election, Jack Smith is in discussions about how to wind down the two cases against Trump.

“Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy,” Trump said when asked by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt whether he would “pardon yourself” or “fire Jack Smith” if reelected.

“I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said.

The discussions between Smith and DOJ leadership are expected to last several days.

Justice Department log circularJustice Department officials are looking at options for how to wind down the two criminal cases while also complying with a 2020 [sic] memo from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel about indictments or prosecutions of sitting presidents.

They’re not mentioning a fairly obvious detail. According to governing regulations, when a Special Counsel finishes his work, he must write a report to the Attorney General.

Closing documentation. At the conclusion of the Special Counsel’s work, he or she shall provide the Attorney General with a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions reached by the Special Counsel.

So if Smith is totally done, he has to write a report.

These reports that Smith is engaged in these discussions come as Bill Barr and others are yapping their mouths about Smith simply dismissing the cases. By telling the press that Smith is already working on shutting down the cases, Smith pre-empts any effort from Trump to offer another solution — and does so before Trump files his response to the immunity brief on November 21.

In other words, this may be no more than an effort to get one more bite at the apple, to describe what Smith found, which would be particularly important if there are still undisclosed aspects of the case, as I suggested there might be.

Where things get interesting, though, is Trump’s co-conspirators, people like Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. Those guys could be prosecuted, as Roger Stone was after Mueller finished up. Trump would order his Attorney General to dismiss the cases — they’re never going to be prosecuted. But it would impose a political cost right at the beginning of his administration.

Update: NYT’s version of this notes that they are trying to preserve the appeal in the 11th Circuit. Of course Walt Nauta is still on that appeal.

Emptywheel, Analysis: Trump Sold Grievance and America Liked What He Was Selling, Emptywheel (Marcy Wheeler), right, Nov. 6, 2024. Once Trump got marcy wheelereveryone hooked on his grievance drug, Merrick Garland was never going to make a difference.

I have tried, over and over, to explain how the investigation into Trump and his co-conspirators proceeded. More recently, I’ve explained how you couldn’t have charged Trump with insurrection — the only thing that would have disqualified him from running — until after May 2023, and had Jack Smith done so, it would have ended up exactly where we are here, with John Roberts delaying everything until after the election.

ny times logoNew York Times, Most of Sean Combs’s Accusers Are Unnamed. Can They Stay That Way? Julia Jacobs, Nov. 8, 2024 (print ed.). The debate over anonymity in civil and criminal sex abuse cases weighs the principle of a fair trial against the desire to protect accusers’ privacy.

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Letters From An American, Commentary: November 6, [Trump Wins: What Happens Next], Heather Cox Richardson, right, historian, author, Nov. 7, 2024. heather cox richardson cnnYesterday, November 5, 2024, Americans reelected former president Donald Trump, a Republican, to the presidency over Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump vowed to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations and to make up lost revenue through tariffs, which he incorrectly insists are paid by foreign countries; tariffs are paid by U.S. consumers.

For policies, Trump’s campaign embraced the Project 2025 agenda led by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which has close ties to Orbán. That plan calls for getting rid of the nonpartisan civil service the U.S. has had since 1883 and for making both the Department of Justice and the military partisan instruments of a strong president, much as Orbán did in Hungary.

It also calls for instituting religious rule, including an end to abortion rights, across the U.S. Part of the idea of “purifying” the country is the deportation of undocumented immigrants: Trump promised to deport 20 million people at an estimated cost of $88 billion to $315 billion a year. That is what voters chose.

Pundits today have spent time dissecting the election results, many trying to find the one tweak that would have changed the outcome, and suggesting sweeping solutions to the Democrats’ obvious inability to attract voters. There is no doubt that a key factor in voters’ swing to Trump is that they associated the inflation of the post-pandemic months with Biden and turned the incumbents out, a phenomenon seen all over the world.

There is also no doubt that both racism and sexism played an important role in Harris’s defeat.

But my own conclusion is that both of those things were amplified by the flood of disinformation that has plagued the U.S. for years now. Russian political theorists called the construction of a virtual political reality through modern media “political technology.” They developed several techniques in this approach to politics, but the key was creating a false narrative in order to control public debate.

These techniques perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.

Politico, Lawyer linked to Trump’s transition defends Trump’s right to dictate Justice Department actions, Josh Gerstein, Nov. 9, 2024. GOP attorney Mark Paoletta says history and law support any president’s authority to start or stop criminal probes.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Has Made His View of Migrants Clear. Will It Stop Them From Coming? Julie Turkewitz, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Genevieve Glatsky, Nov. 9, 2024. Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation effort in American history. Now migrants are weighing his pledge in deciding whether to trek to the U.S.

ny times logoNew York Times via Threads, Opinion: Don’t ask whose fault this was. Plenty of time for second-guessing and recriminations, Paul Krugman, Nov. 6, 2025. Ask instead, what can you do? For my part, that means telling the truth as I see it, as long as I can.

The media will be under a lot of pressure to toe the line; don’t capitulate in advancepaulkrugman73d3 days agoIf this goes the way it seems to be going, a plea: Hold the recriminations. The important thing will be figuring out how to fight the climate of repression, which will begin via preemptive obedience long before the government formally changes hands

ny times logoNew York Times, Kamala Harris Had a Wall Street-Approved Economic Pitch. It Fell Flat, Nicholas Nehamas and Andrew Duehren, Nov. 9, 2024.  The vice president vacillated on how to talk about the economy, and ended up adopting tweaks that corporate and progressive allies said muddled the message.

ny times logoNew York Times, Elon Musk Is Positioning X Behind the New Trump Presidency, Kate Conger and Sheera Frenkel, Nov. 9, 2024. Since the election, Mr. Musk has used his social media company to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect.

Since Donald J. Trump won the presidential election, Elon Musk has gone all in on X to promote the incoming administration.

Mr. Musk, who owns X, posted on the platform about politics more than 400 times between Tuesday and Friday, celebrating Mr. Trump’s victory and talking about the causes that the president-elect should take up in office. Mr. Musk’s posts included a photo of himself and his son X Æ A-Xii Musk surrounded by Mr. Trump and his family at Mar-a-Lago, as well as another photo of himself with Mr. Trump that was captioned “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” a Latin phrase that appears on the dollar bill and means “a new order for the ages.”

Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, also chimed in. In reply to a post this week about the platform’s role in driving political conversation, she wrote, “Reporting for duty.”

Their comments show how Mr. Musk is increasingly positioning X as the platform behind the new Trump presidency. Since the election was called on Wednesday, Mr. Musk has used X to talk up how bright the future will be under the president-elect. In addition, he has urged X’s users to replace the news media and report on Mr. Trump’s triumphant return to office, and has promoted the platform as a go-to destination for continuing conservative conversation.

That comes on top of how Mr. Musk has used X as a battering ram for months to support Mr. Trump’s campaign. Mr. Musk, who endorsed Mr. Trump in July, held a wide-ranging audio conversation with him on X in August. That same month, Mr. Trump started using his reinstated account on the platform regularly.

On Tuesday, Mr. Musk held an audio town hall on the site urging his more than 203 million followers to vote for Mr. Trump. The president-elect credited Mr. Musk on Wednesday for helping secure his win. “A star is born — Elon!” Mr. Trump said during his victory speech.

Mr. Musk has “turned X into the church of the conservative movement,” said Steven Livingston, the founding director of the Institute for Data, Democracy and Politics at George Washington University. “It’s gone from that public sphere to a bullhorn.”

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, echoed Mr. Musk’s criticisms of the news media but did not comment directly on whether X had influenced the outcome of the election.

Mr. Musk and X did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Musk’s transformation of X into a right-leaning platform began when he bought the social media company in October 2022. Within weeks, he dropped the site’s content moderation guidelines in the name of free speech.

Last year, Mr. Musk had engineers add a line of code to promote his own account, which quickly propelled him to become the most followed person on the site. Engagement with his posts have since mushroomed, according to X’s metrics, making him the loudest voice on the platform.

washington post logoWashington Post, Jacky Rosen wins close race for U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, Frances Vinal, Nov. 9, 2024. Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada in a dozen years, and Rosen, the incumbent, had been ahead in the polls leading up to the election.

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D) was projected to win Nevada’s Senate race, one of the last Senate seats to be called after a Republican majority emerged on election night.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada in a dozen years, and Rosen, the incumbent, had been ahead in the polls leading up to the election. She was anointed by Harry M. Reid, one of the longest-serving Senate majority leaders in U.S. history, before his death in 2021.Get the latest election news and results

Rosen beat Sam Brown, a retired Army captain endorsed by Donald Trump. Brown suffered third-degree burns to nearly a third of his body, including his face, when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008.

Nevada voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 but has also elected Republicans recently, including Trump this year and Gov. Joe Lombardo in 2022.

Rosen, a former computer programmer and synagogue president, promised a bipartisan approach in working with other lawmakers. She was first elected to the U.S. House in 2016 and then the Senate in 2018.

She also campaigned on her support for abortion rights, against a candidate who said he would oppose federal funding for the procedure. Nevada on Tuesday voted to enshrine the right to abortion, until fetal viability or when needed to protect the life or health of a pregnant woman, in its state constitution.

She will join Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, elected in 2016 and reelected in 2022, in representing Nevada in the Senate.Politico, Pamela Price ousted as Alameda DA in latest loss for California progressives, Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary, Pamela Price ousted as Alameda DA in latest loss for California progressives

Politico, Transition of Power: Pentagon officials anxious Trump may fire the military’s top general, Nov. 9, 2024. The president-elect has railed against “woke” generals and others who have pushed for diversity initiatives in the ranks.

The Bulwark, Democrats Now Must Rebuild Their Obliterated Party, A.B. Stoddard, Nov. 8, 2024.  The same cast won’t be returning next season.

Three months ago, the Democratic party looked robust. It was willing to push a sitting president off the ticket because of his advanced age, then it quickly united around another candidate. The Republican party, by contrast, was sticking with its (also old) convicted criminal. Parties exist to win elections, not launder money to their nominee’s lawyers or tend to the egos of elderly men—and the Democrats showed they understood that.

But that party was demolished on Tuesday.

Democrats are now reeling, and not only because of the breadth of Donald Trump’s rout, which points to a historic realignment in the electorate that will force them to adapt their policies and messaging—but also because their entire apparatus just fell apart. Their team is busted. All the big players have just participated in, and influenced, their last election. They will have their opinions, and they will render declarations, but they are done.

U.S. House logoPresident Joe Biden crawls, humiliated, into retirement in January after being expelled. He will be blamed forever by many of his fellow Democrats for Trump’s return to power. Kamala Harris, a vice president and former senator who never had deep roots in the party, has suffered a devastating defeat. And while Harris sources said her concession speech Wednesday was designed to position her to remain a party leader, that appears naïve.

Trump has defeated not one but two women, the nation’s first and only females to become major party presidential nominees. As a consequence, popular Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and progressive star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are now unlikely to lead their party.

Indeed, given the country’s populist turn, the Democratic party may shy away from elite lawyers in the future—bad news for Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Someone like Sen. John Fetterman or Rep. Ruben Gallego—a former Marine who grew up poor, had his own bed for the first time when he arrived at Harvard University, and seems poised to soon be Arizona’s senator-elect—may be smarter choices. Gavin Newsom need not apply.

As for who will champion the party’s ideas and reinvigorate the demoralized grassroots behind new candidates—those jobs are open too.

The Clintons and the Obamas, of the free-trade establishment and of the past, won’t be wanted in a party that must reposition itself to win over working-class voters it has hemorrhaged since 2016.

Rep. James Clyburn, age 84, helped Biden win the party’s nomination in 2020 but he is not playing kingmaker anymore.

Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer, age 73, has never been influential in the party and is now headed into the wilderness as Senate Democrats are unlikely to regain a majority in the chamber for the foreseeable future.

Jaime Harrison who runs the Democratic National Committee, will pass the baton in humility and bewilderment . . . but to whom?

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who has served just one term as leader of the House Democrats, is the only current leader who will be part of the future Democratic party.

Nancy Pelosi remains the only senior leader in the party with any moral authority. Had she not succeeded in pushing Biden out in July, Trump’s victory would have been far larger. She passed power successfully to Jeffries and is a shrewd strategist connected at all levels who will be clear eyed about the party’s path forward. But she is also 84 and was just elected to her twentieth term in the House.

It’s hard to know where to start.

Trump’s smashing win shows he has built a durable and diverse working-class coalition. He held strong with every voting bloc, and made gains with most. In 2020, he lost Latino men to Biden by 36 to 59 percent; this year, he won them 55 to 43. Many women voted for abortion rights ballot initiatives while supporting Trump, whose Supreme Court justices helped overturn Roe. Young men under age 30, whom Biden won by 15 points four years ago, now voted for Trump by 14 points. The entire country, including blue states, moved rightward.

This affirmed the GOP argument that Democrats are considered elitist and out of touch, speaking only to the 43 percent of the electorate with college degrees. They are seen as soft on crime, wrong on energy production, and as radical culture warriors who expect us all to welcome boys on to girls

Politico, 2024 Elections: Democrats who warned Harris launch their rebukes: ‘These guys didn’t get it at all,’ Irie Sentner, Nov. 8, 2024. Trump moved many corners of the country rightward.

A group of Democrats are raising pointed questions about their losses on Election Day and why their warnings weren’t heeded.

Democratic pollster James Zogby sent countless memos to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign warning about her liabilities over Gaza. Dean Phillips called on Democrats to hold a competitive primary when President Joe Biden was the nominee. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez for years urged Democrats to take the concerns of working-class voters seriously.

“These guys didn’t get it at all, they were playing to a narrow base of the people they know best,” said Zogby, who claimed he sent Harris and the Biden administration memos on their vulnerabilities over the war “until I got tired of writing them and they got tired of reading them.”

Prominent Democrats broadly agree that the vice president’s historic 107-day campaign was always going to be an uphill battle. Still, the scope of the loss has prompted an intense round of finger-pointing that reflects deep ideological fissures within the party as it seeks a path forward.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a powerful force behind Biden’s exit from the race, told the New York Times in an interview Thursday that “had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race.” She said she had anticipated an open primary, but “because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible.”

Phillips, who ran against Biden in the Democratic primary, told The Washington Post that this was “absolutely” the outcome he had imagined — and the reason he’d challenged the president, whom he thought was too weak to run and win. “Do I believe if my party had heeded the call to promote and encourage a competitive primary that we would have identified a candidate perhaps better positioned to win?” Phillips asked. “Absolutely. No question, 100 percent.”

And Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat who is likely to hold her seat in a red Washington district and has long urged her party to focus more on the working class, on Thursday told the New York Times: “It’s a lot easier to look outward, to blame and demonize other people, instead of looking in the mirror and seeing what we can do.”

Resistance to Fascism in America, Commentary: So when Trump fires all non-partisan career professionals, Tom Santos, right, Nov. 6, 2024. So when Trump tom santosfires all non-partisan career professionals in government, replaces them with radical loyalists within every nook and cranny of the US government, and adds radical judges everywhere.

And every one of you that voted for him finally wake up from your fucked up fantasy just like the folks that woke up after 4 years of the last shit show, only to realize it’s much much worse, and much more permanent, this time.

When the cancer you caused has infected every bit of the American system and it can’t be unwound for a lifetime.

What then?

Do you beg this country for forgiveness for choosing fascism because you were conned into believing your eggs are too expensive because of Joe Biden?

  • You just put Steve Bannon in charge of American policy.
  • You just put Michael Flynn in charge of our military.
  • You just put Alex Jones in charge of media and propaganda.
  • You just put Stephen Miller in charge of immigration policy.
  • You just put batshit crazy RFK Jr. in charge of health policy.
  • You just killed free public education and privatized schools, which you will have to pay for.
  • You just sealed the deal on a national abortion ban, because you’re demented if you think it’s not coming.
  • You just radicalized the Supreme Court for a generation.
  • You just made women less safe and less free.
  • You just made this country an oligarchy with the billionaires quite literally in charge now.
  • You just put in office the one person that believes a president is a king, with the fucking Supreme Court ruling to prove it in his back pocket!
  • You just ushered in Fascism.

Because your cereal costs more.

Resistance to Fascism in America, Commentary: Let me summarize the yet-to-be drafted Democrat Post-Election Autopsy conversation, Tom Santos, Nov. 6, 2024. Let me summarize the yet-to-be drafted Democrat Post-Election Autopsy so we can move on with our lives. Here’s what happened in my opinion, in straightforward terms:

1. Biden was intended as a one-term president – the Democrat best positioned to defeat Trump in 2020.

2. After he won, however, expectations shifted, and it became assumed he would run for a second term.

3. Instead of spending four years preparing and cultivating the next candidate, Democrats doubled down on Biden, perhaps at his insistence.

4. Concerns about Biden’s age and health circulated for months before his rough debate performance, which only reinforced those worries. By then, changing course would have been perceived as weakness.

5. Following the debate, the need for a shift became unavoidable, leading Biden to step down in July 2024.

6. Donald Trump’s campaign infrastructure had been developing for over nine years, whereas Harris’s campaign was just four months old by Election Day. Despite the loss, what she achieved in that brief period is nothing short of remarkable.

Root Cause AnalysisDemocrats should have leaned into the narrative that Biden would serve only one term, passing the baton to “a new generation” – presumably Harris (or perhaps someone else they could have cultivated in a 4-year block of time).

By positioning Harris as the 2024 candidate as early as 2021, they could have built her organization and boosted her name recognition.

The difference between a four-month campaign and a four-year campaign could have secured her victory in this election. The Democrats squandered 4 years of planning time and had to scrambling to make it all happen in 4 months.

Greg Palast Investigates, Here’s what we do now, Greg Palast, below left, Nov. 6, 2024. Being right never felt so horrid.Before the election, I wrote, “How Trump Won.”And on Election night I waited for the returns to make a fool of me.

greg palast hsInstead, the returns made the fool a President.

And so, my vacation’s cancelled. My life’s cancelled; that is, a life of anything but sleuthing and exposing the details of the heist of our democracy.

What’s at stake?No way around it, this is one frightening moment.

Did the voters or the vote challengers pick our next president?

Decades of progress created with sweat and determination face destruction. Within the next six months, we may see the Voting Rights Act repealed — and civil rights set back 50 years; the entirety of our environmental protection laws burnt in a coal pit; police cruelty will be made our urban policy; the Education Department closed to give billionaires a tax holiday; and howling anti-Semites will be appointed White House counselors.

But the horror we face is countered by this one hard question the US media will ignore, but I can’t: Did Donald Trump actually win this election? If so, was it really a landslide?

Thinking About…..Commentary on Tyranny: The Russian Bomb Threats, Timothy Snyder, right, Yale professor, author, Nov. 5, 2024. Russia has tried to alter the outcome of an American election on election day. This must be addressed immediately. Regardless of who wins this presidential election, the precedent of a foreign country targeting American polling places with bomb threats cannot be allowed to stand.

I worry that, as we have done in previous elections, we tend to minimize or dismiss the actions of foreign countries. An attempt to intimidate American voters from a foreign country is an outrage and should be treated as such. It is also a policy problem that must be resolved.

I am concerned that the problem was broader than we understand. It appears that Russia communicated bomb threats to polling stations in five states: Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. We are talking about dozens of actions, all in all. I don’t think the details of all of these threats have yet been reported, let alone assimilated. flag of USA

In Fulton County, Georgia, no fewer than thirty-two polling stations had to deal with bomb threats. We know that five polling stations in Dekalb County, Georgia, were targeted by bomb threats.

Wisconsin and Michigan each had to deal with multiple bomb threats. We know that a polling place in West Chester, Pennsylvania was evacuated, and that another threat targeted Clearfield County, Pennsylvania. In Arizona, four sites in Navajo County were targeted. Presumably there was more and we will learn more.

In some of these cases, there was consideration disruption. We do not know how many people left lines and did not return. We do not know how many people were frightened away from voting. The only way to find out is to provide an adequate remedy. Some polling stations were kept open a bit longer.

It seems to me that, in every county where this happened, the vote should be extended by a full day, through Wednesday. Perhaps this can arranged by a lawsuit — I leave the means to the experts. But an additional day of voting is a way to ensure that justice is done. It is also the only way to assure Americans, going forward, that a foreign country did not alter the outcome of the vote.

And it will also be necessary to deter actions like this in the future. If something as simple as bomb threats can work to disrupt an American election, Russia or other actors will presumably do the same thing again. The only way to deter this is to show that it does not work, and that the rights of Americans will be defended.

ny times logoNew York Times, Opinion: Kamala Harris Took Women for Granted, Pamela Paul, Nov. 7, 2024. This was supposed to be the big gender gap election. pamela paul nytThe data showed women leaning heavily Democratic, with abortion rights a primary driver.

Women were expected to line up in droves, ready to reel in the vote for their designated glass-ceiling-shattering heroine.

That, at least, seemed to be the Harris campaign’s assumption.

Why think otherwise? Everywhere on social media and across college campuses, women were appalled by Donald Trump’s cave man antics and JD Vance’s callous “childless cat lady” bro talk. The word “fury” appeared in heavy rotation. Come Election Day, this female rage would surely smack Trump, a rapist, clear across the face.

Things didn’t go according to plan. Instead of a yawning gender gap, exit polls showed a real but not determinative disparity between how men and women voted. If early exit polls hold, Harris’s advantage with women may have been narrower than Biden’s in 2020.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her vice presidential selection for the 2024 presidential campaign.But do not blame women for Kamala Harris’s loss. Blame Kamala Harris and her campaign strategists.

Apart from promising to safeguard abortion rights, the Harris campaign didn’t do nearly enough to address other issues important to women, including the “kitchen table” economy, education, gun control, health care, the environment and immigration. The long hangover of Covid was brushed aside like yesterday’s nightmare. If there’s one thing almost every woman can agree on, it’s that they do not like being taken for granted.

Harris’s biggest mistake was leaning hard on a single issue, making abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign, which reflects a fairly reductive view of women’s lives as citizens. Women — even women who favor abortion rights — do not vote by uterus alone.Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

trump 2024Nor is abortion a universal concern. After all, large swaths of women aren’t trying to or able to get pregnant. And some of the reddest states have passed measures to protect abortion rights, but voted overwhelmingly for Trump. The majority of women who seek abortions are already mothers who often terminate pregnancies for financial reasons. They worry about how to feed and educate the kids they already have.

The most stunning hole in Harris’s campaign was education. Only 16 percent of Americans think K-12 education is moving in the right direction. Women (and men) are upset by the broad failure of basic education standards in this country, a sentiment that was only exacerbated during Covid. As Jonathan Chait wrote recently in New York magazine, education was long a defining issue for Democrats. But President Biden didn’t make K-12 education in any way a priority and Harris was nearly silent about it on the campaign trail. It was barely and only blandly mentioned on her website. “Parents’ rights” were dismissed as a right-wing concern or a code for hate or the province of conservative women. There was little acknowledgment that Democrats are parents too.

djt biden resized smilesThe Bulwark, The Strategic Failure of 2024 Was Written in 2021, Jonathan V. Last, Nov. 7, 2024. President Biden bet everything on the innate goodness of the bulwark logo big shipAmerican people. We should learn from his mistake. 

1. Two Paths in the Wood

At the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidency he had a choice.

(1) Biden could treat the Trump years as a dire warning about the American constitutional order and focus his agenda on Trump-proofing our democracy.

Democracy Docket, Commentary: The fight continues, Marc Elias, right, Nov. 7, 2024. I was in New York City on election night in 2016. It was awful. As the general marc eliascounsel to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, my job was to monitor and respond to legal issues that might arise on Election Day or afterwards.

That night, as election returns came in, I was huddled with a group of other senior staff just down the hallway from the candidate and her family. By 10:30 p.m. we were nervous but still hopeful. By midnight the dawning reality of what was happening had set in. By 3 a.m., I was in an Uber back to my hotel knowing that it was over. Donald Trump had won.

djt project 2025Medias Touch Network, Commentary: MAGA Admits Project 2025 Was the Trump Plan For the Country All Along, Troy Matthews, Nov. 7, 2024. But it’s so unpopular they had to lie to everyone until after the election.

mtn meidas touch networkSelf-described “theocratic fascist” and MAGA podcast host Matt Walsh admitted that implementing Project 2025 was the Trump plan all along in a post on X this week.

“Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol,” Walsh wrote. Walsh also mocked Americans on his podcast with a video message directly stating that Trump will be a “good dictator,” and that women won’t lose the right to vote, they will still be able to vote for “whoever their husbands tell them to vote for.”

This follows a post from the Heritage Foundation that Kevin Roberts and the leaders of Project 2025 were celebrating the victory of Donald Trump.

The effort to oppose and defend against the next Trump Administration’s radical agendas, laws, and orders starts now. Michael Popok identifies a MAGA Supreme Court decision overturning a 40-year precedent of respecting Agency decisions from June that can actually be used to oppose all efforts by Trump to use his newly installed puppets at his administrative agencies to radically alter American life for the worse.

Politico, Dems rage against Biden’s ‘arrogance’ after Harris loss, Adam Cancryn, Nov. 6, 2024. Democratic leaders had hoped Harris could separate herself from Biden’s deficiencies.

politico CustomDemocrats are directing their rage over losing the presidential race at Joe Biden, who they blame for setting up Kamala Harris for failure by not dropping out sooner.

washington post logoWashington Post, Jacky Rosen wins close race for U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, Frances Vinal, Nov. 9, 2024. Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada in a dozen years, and Rosen, the incumbent, had been ahead in the polls leading up to the election.

jacky rosenSen. Jacky Rosen (D) was projected to win Nevada’s Senate race, one of the last Senate seats to be called after a Republican majority emerged on election night.

Republicans have not won a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada in a dozen years, and Rosen, the incumbent, had been ahead in the polls leading up to the election. She was anointed by Harry M. Reid, one of the longest-serving Senate majority leaders in U.S. history, before his death in 2021.Get the latest election news and results

Rosen beat Sam Brown, a retired Army captain endorsed by Donald Trump. Brown suffered third-degree burns to nearly a third of his body, including his face, when his Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in 2008.

Nevada voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016 but has also elected Republicans recently, including Trump this year and Gov. Joe Lombardo in 2022.

Rosen, a former computer programmer and synagogue president, promised a bipartisan approach in working with other lawmakers. She was first elected to the U.S. House in 2016 and then the Senate in 2018.

She also campaigned on her support for abortion rights, against a candidate who said he would oppose federal funding for the procedure. Nevada on Tuesday voted to enshrine the right to abortion, until fetal viability or when needed to protect the life or health of a pregnant woman, in its state constitution.

She will join Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, elected in 2016 and reelected in 2022, in representing Nevada in the Senate.Politico, Pamela Price ousted as Alameda DA in latest loss for California progressives, Jack Detsch and Paul McLeary, Pamela Price ousted as Alameda DA in latest loss for California progressives.

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U.S. Immigration

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ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Has Made His View of Migrants Clear. Will It Stop Them From Coming? Julie Turkewitz, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Genevieve Glatsky, Nov. 10, 2024 (print ed.). Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation effort in American history. Now migrants are weighing his pledge in deciding whether to trek to the U.S.

trump 2024This Sunday was the day that Daniel García, a Venezuelan delivery worker living in the capital of Colombia, had planned to begin an arduous land journey toward the United States.

Then Donald J. Trump became president-elect, and everything changed. Unsure if he could make it to the border before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, and fearful that he would be turned away once Mr. Trump was in office, Mr. García, 31, has decided to stay put.

“It is a very high investment,” he said of the journey north, which he figured would cost him $2,500, about a year’s savings. “I prefer not to risk it,” he added.

With Mr. Trump now headed back to the White House, many potential migrants are rethinking their plans, while border officials are working hard to understand what a Trump presidency will mean for the number of people trying to make it the United States.

Mr. Trump made a broad crackdown on immigration a pillar of his campaign — a message that spread around the world.

In Mexico, humanitarian groups and migration officials are preparing for a possible rush of migrants to the United States before he assumes the presidency in January.

ny times logoNew York Times, ‘An Earthquake’ Along the Border: Trump Flipped Hispanic South Texas, J. David Goodman, Edgar Sandoval and Robert Gebeloff, Nov. 9, 2024 (print ed.). Donald J. Trump’s biggest gains were along the Texas border, a Democratic stronghold where most voters are Hispanic. He won 12 of the region’s 14 counties, up from five in 2016.

Nowhere in the United States have historically Democratic counties shifted so far and so fast in the direction of former President Donald J. Trump as they have in the Texas communities along the Rio Grande, where Hispanic residents make up an overwhelming majority.

texas mapIn recent elections, the region’s mix of sprawling urban centers and rural ranch lands that had been reliable Democratic strongholds for generations were beginning to turn red.

Then on Tuesday, Mr. Trump brought South Texas and the border region firmly into his column, taking 12 of the 14 counties along the border with Mexico, and making significant inroads even in El Paso, the border’s biggest city. In 2016, Mr. Trump carried only five of the counties.

djt maga hatThe support for Mr. Trump along the Texas border provided the starkest example of what has been a broad national embrace of the Republican candidate among Hispanic and working-class voters. That shift has taken place in rural communities as well as in large cities, like Miami, and in parts of New York and New Jersey.

But Texas stood out. Eight of the top 10 Democratic counties that most swung toward Mr. Trump on Tuesday were on the Texas border or within a short drive.

One of the biggest swings came in Starr County, a rural area of 65,000 people dotted with small towns where sections of border wall have been rising, incomes are low and many travel long distances to jobs in the West Texas oil fields. The county flipped Republican on Tuesday, backing Mr. Trump by about 16 percentage points. He lost the county to Hillary Clinton by 60 points in 2016.

ny times logoNew York Times, Trump Has Made His View of Migrants Clear. Will It Stop Them From Coming? Julie Turkewitz, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega and Genevieve Glatsky, Nov. 9, 2024. Donald Trump has promised the largest deportation effort in American history. Now migrants are weighing his pledge in deciding whether to trek to the U.S.

This Sunday was the day that Daniel García, a Venezuelan delivery worker living in the capital of Colombia, had planned to begin an arduous land journey toward the United States.

Then Donald J. Trump became president-elect, and everything changed. Unsure if he could make it to the border before Mr. Trump’s inauguration, and fearful that he would be turned away once Mr. Trump was in office, Mr. García, 31, has decided to stay put.

“It is a very high investment,” he said of the journey north, which he figured would cost him $2,500, about a year’s savings. “I prefer not to risk it,” he added.

With Mr. Trump now headed back to the White House, many potential migrants are rethinking their plans, while border officials are working hard to understand what a Trump presidency will mean for the number of people trying to make it the United States.

Mr. Trump made a broad crackdown on immigration a pillar of his campaign — a message that spread around the world.

In Mexico, humanitarian groups and migration officials are preparing for a possible rush of migrants to the United States before he assumes the presidency in January.

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U.S. Jobs, Economy

ny times logoNew York Times, A Potential Fight Over the Fed’s Future Ramps Up, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Ravi Mattu, Bernhard Warner, Sarah Kessler, Michael J. de la Merced and Lauren Hirsch, Nov. 11, 2024. As  allies of Donald Trump, including Elon Musk, endorse ending the Federal Reserve’s independence, its chair is said to be ready to battle in court.

federal reserve system CustomDonald Trump’s threat to exert more say over the Fed or even fire Jay Powell, the chair of the central bank, has alarmed some on Wall Street. But the president-elect’s effort took on added weight in recent days, after Elon Musk endorsed a push to erode the Fed’s independence.

The fight shows how the future of the Fed could remain high on the agenda, and how far Musk’s influence — and the role of X as place for announcing policy positions — could extend across government.

The Fed has its foes. Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, introduced a bill in June to abolish the central bank, accusing it of being an “economic manipulator that has directly contributed to the financial instability many Americans face today.”

Lee said on X that he wants to see the Fed under the president’s control — a view that Musk backed.

Powell could turn to the courts to challenge any White House attempt to exert more control, according to The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos. Trump appointed Powell in 2017 but flirted with removing him shortly afterward. Powell held onto his job, but was ready for a fight if Trump made a move,

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Scandal, #MeToo, Trafficking, Abortion, Women’s Health

washington post logoWashington Post, Women stockpile abortion pills before Trump term, Marisa Iati, Nov. 11, 2024. Aid Access, one of the largest suppliers of abortion medication, reported receiving 10,000 orders in the 24 hours after the election was called — roughly 17 times more than usual.

Women are seeking out abortion medication in higher-than-usual numbers ahead of a Donald Trump presidency that they fear could severely curtail access to reproductive care.

Aid Access, one of the largest suppliers of abortion pills, reported receiving 10,000 requests for the medication in the 24 hours after the election was called for the Republican nominee early Wednesday — roughly 17 times the 600 that the organization typically gets in a day.Get the latest election news and results

Just the Pill, a nonprofit that prescribes abortion medication through telemedicine, said 22 of its 125 orders from Wednesday through Friday were from people who are not pregnant. It’s normally “a rarity” for anyone to ask for that kind of “advance provision,” said Julie Amaon, the group’s interim executive director.

And Plan C, which provides information about accessing abortion medication, reported receiving 82,200 visitors to its website on Wednesday, compared with approximately 4,000 or 4,500 visitors per day leading up to the election.

Meidas Touch Network, Commentary: On Election Night, Trump Hosted a MAGA Billionaire Accused of Pressuring Workers to Perform Sex Acts, J.D. Wolf, steve wynn headshotNov. 8, 2024. Trump’s troubling alliance with Steve Wynn.

mtn meidas touch networkWhen former President Donald Trump hosted his election night party at Mar-a-Lago Tuesday, he welcomed a guest whose presence raised serious ethical concerns: billionaire casino mogul Steve Wynn, right.

Known for his lavish lifestyle and political influence, Wynn has also been the subject of multiple sexual harassment allegations, which have cast a long shadow over his business and public image.

Energy, Transportation, Climate Change

llewellyn king photo logo

White House Chronicle, Commentary: Coming Electricity Crisis Will Test Trump and Musk, Llewellyn King, above, Nov. 9, 2024. I would like to lay before you two powerful myths that are very present in the United States in this post-election hiatus.

The first is that business people, because they have had a record of making money, will be good at running the government.

The second is that because one has been a successful inventor, one can fix everything.

No president, including Donald Trump in his first term, has been able to apply the harsh lessons of business to the infinitely complex task of taking care of all of the people.

Equally, inventors can’t invent the nation out of every challenge; they fail more often than they succeed. If Elon Musk had launched his Boring Company before Tesla, he likely wouldn’t be known today.

No one should underestimate the genius of the man. Just think of the engineering feat of Musk’s SpaceX “catching” the first-stage booster of its Starship megarocket as it returned to the launch pad after a test flight.

But that doesn’t mean Musk is qualified to overhaul the government or that he will have a simpatico relationship with Trump for long. Trump has suggested that Musk will be the architect of a new streamlined government. Maybe.

The Trump-Musk entwining of two myths isn’t likely to endure.

Trump, always used to getting his way, will come into office with the knowledge of where he failed the first time. He will take control as though he had won the nation not at the ballot box, which he assuredly did, but in a takeover battle, and he will do with the company he has bought what he will. He found that hard to do the first time, but he is better-equipped this time with a substantial mandate that he will employ.

Even though he has been designated by Trump as an agent of change, Musk is unlikely to last.

Musk won’t bow to Trump for long. He is like Rudyard Kipling’s cat: He walks by himself, alone and capriciously. He embodies many of the strengths and limitations that marked the late Howard Hughes: vision and willful eccentricity.

Trump has disparaged electric cars and renewable energy, two of the cornerstones of the Musk empire. Musk is a man who dreams of a future that he can invent, with automated cars, space habitation, and solar power dominating electric supply.

Trump’s vision is not soaring. It is a backward look to a time that has passed. It is a vision which recalls the Reader’s Digest view of America in the heyday of that magazine, wholesome, patriotic, simple but fundamentally unreal.

The first crisis that might divide the two men, and challenge the Trump administration, is energy.

An electricity shortage is bearing down on the nation and there are no easy fixes. Trump has laid out an energy policy that would emphasize oil and gas drilling and environmental controls and curbs on the rate of wind generation deployment.

None of that will get us through the impending crisis as the demand for more electricity is surging. It is driven by more electric vehicles, greater use of electricity in manufacturing, and by the huge and seemingly limitless demands of data centers being built across the country to serve the needs of a data-driven, AI economy and its relentless electricity demand.

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Media, High Tech, Culture, Education

Olivia Nuzzi, shown above at center, a former writer for New York magazine embroiled in a scandal involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right, had accused her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza, left, of harassment and blackmail.ryan lizza olivia nuzzi rfk jr

ny times logoNew York Times, Political Reporter Olivia Nuzzi Drops Protective Order Against Ex-Fiancé, Katie Robertson, Nov. 13, 2024 (print ed.). Ms. Nuzzi, shown above at center, a former writer for New York magazine embroiled in a scandal involving Robert F. Kennedy Jr., right,  had accused her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza, left, of harassment and blackmail.

Olivia Nuzzi, the high-profile New York magazine writer whose entanglement with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. set off a scandal, has withdrawn a request for a protective order against her former fiancé, the Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza.

Ms. Nuzzi, who left her role at New York magazine last month, filed a motion to dismiss the civil protection order on Friday in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. She had been granted a temporary protection order against Mr. Lizza on Oct. 1 after she claimed in a complaint that he had blackmailed and harassed her.

Mr. Lizza, who is Politico’s chief Washington correspondent and a co-author of the Playbook newsletter, has vehemently denied all the accusations. He said in a statement on Tuesday that Ms. Nuzzi had “taken the only course available to her and withdrawn her fabricated claims.”

Ms. Nuzzi, who was until recently the Washington correspondent for New York magazine, was placed on leave on Sept. 19 after her editors found out about a relationship between her and Mr. Kennedy, who had been a candidate for president. Ms. Nuzzi had told them that the relationship had turned personal but was never physical. The magazine said in a note to readers that it was “a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures.”

The Guardian, ‘Go to hell’: Project 2025 chief kicks Guardian reporter out of book event, Adam Gabbatt, Nov. 13, 2024. Heritage Foundation staff, introducing Kevin Roberts to the reporter, says: ‘You’ve got two minutes with our best friend Adam from the Guardian.’

guardian logoKevin Roberts, the head of the influential rightwing thinktank the Heritage Foundation, told a Guardian reporter to “go to hell” at the launch of Roberts’s new book on Tuesday night, then threw the reporter out of the venue, apparently in response to reporting on the organization.

The Guardian was invited last week to Roberts’s book events in New York and Washington DC. They were billed as an opportunity “to celebrate Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America” – Roberts’s new book, which features a foreword by the vice-president-elect, JD Vance.

Roberts, the chief architect of Project 2025, the infamous rightwing plan for Donald Trump’s presidency which would crack down on immigration, dismantle LGBTQ+ and abortion rights and diminish environmental protections, spoke briefly at the event, held in the lavish Kimberly Hotel in midtown New York City, before mingling with the crowd.

Approached by the Guardian, a staff member at the Heritage Foundation said Roberts would be available for a brief interview. The Guardian waited patiently before being introduced to Roberts, who was tidily dressed in a suit, tie and cowboy boots.

“You’ve got two minutes with our best friend Adam from the Guardian,” the Heritage Foundation employee told Roberts.

Roberts said to the Guardian: “Make it good, the first one [question], otherwise you’re going to pound sand.”

It was quite loud in the venue and the Guardian misheard the word “sand”. Asked for clarification, Roberts repeated the phrase.

The Guardian said: “I don’t know what that means,” which seemed to upset Roberts. He reacted angrily.

“It means you’re a bunch of liars, is what it means. So make it good or we’re done,” Roberts said. The Guardian asked if Roberts could elaborate on his “liars” comment, which seemed to upset the Heritage Foundation president further.

“No, we’re done, I’m not talking to you,” Roberts said.

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The Trump - MAGA

The Trump – MAGA “Traction — People’s Convention” poster for a June 16-18 event in Detroit, Michigan.


Source: https://www.justice-integrity.org/2098-nov-2024-news-pt-3


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