Georgia Republican official and outspoken election denier caught voting illegally 9 times
Josh Meyer, USA TODAY – March 28, 2024
A judge has found Georgia Republican Party official Brian Pritchard guilty of illegally voting nine times over several years. Pritchard has falsely asserted Democrats had stolen the 2020 election through fraud.
Administrative Law Judge Lisa Boggs wrote in her Wednesday decision that Pritchard, the Georgia GOP’s first vice chairman, violated state election laws by voting while on probation for forgery and other felonies, and that his explanations were neither “credible or convincing.”
Pritchard must pay a $5,000 fine and $375.14 in investigative costs incurred by the court. Boggs also ordered that Pritchard “be publicly reprimanded for his conduct” by the State Election Board, which sought the sanctions against him.
On Thursday, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called on Pritchard to “resign immediately or be removed” from his Georgia GOP position because he “voted ILLEGALLY nine times while serving out his probation for FELONY check forgery.”
“The Republican Party is the party of election integrity,” Greene said on X, formerly Twitter, and “our state party should be the leading voice on securing our elections.”
Forged checks, and claims of a stolen election
Pritchard, a conservative talk show host, has claimed on his FetchYourNews.com show that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, echoing claims by former President Donald Trump, who lost in the Peach State and nationwide to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and 14 co-defendants are currently facing charges of illegally conspiring to overturn the result in Georgia, while four co-defendants have pleaded guilty.
Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump, gestures while speaking during the 2024 NRB International Christian Media Convention Presidential Forum on February 22, 2024 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Investigations consistently have found no evidence of mass fraud in 2020. But in her 25-page ruling, Boggs found that Pritchard committed voter fraud himself.
Boggs cited certified records from an Allegheny County, Pennsylvania court, which showed Pritchard pleaded guilty in 1996 to felony fraud and theft involving $38,000 in forged checks relating to a construction project and that he was ordered to pay that same amount in restitution. Felons in Georgia lose their right to vote until they complete probation or parole.
Evidence presented in court by two senior officials of the state attorney general’s office indicated Pritchard’s probation had been extended until 2011, but he registered to vote in 2008 and voted in nine elections between then and 2010.
Pritchard testified at an evidentiary hearing in February that he didn’t knowingly commit fraud and that he believed his status as a felon who is ineligible to vote had ended more than two decades ago. He also said he believed his criminal sentence had been converted to a civil judgment, according to a copy of Boggs’ decision.
In an earlier proceeding before the State Election Board, which referred Pritchard’s case to the Georgia attorney general’s office for investigation, his attorney said Pritchard was unaware he was considered a felon when he registered and voted in Georgia.
‘He should have known’
The judge found Pritchard’s explanations to be lacking in credibility, noting that “to accept that the Respondent’s grasp of legal proceedings was so unsophisticated that he did not understand the basic terms of his probation in 1996 … this Court would need to disregard (Pritchard’s) self-described experience as a businessman handling complex projects as well as million-dollar contracts and budgets.”
“Based on the above, and upon careful consideration of the evidence in its totality the Court does not find the explanations credible or convincing,” Boggs wrote. “At the very least, even if the Court accepts he did not know about his felony sentences, the record before this Court demonstrates that he should have known.”
Pritchard’s fine includes $500 for each of the nine times he voted illegally and another $500 for illegally registering to vote in 2008. He can appeal the decision.
Neither Pritchard nor his lawyer, George Weaver Jr. could be reached for immediate comment.
‘I’ve not done anything wrong here’
Pritchard was defiant about his voting record back in December 2022 when he qualified to run in a special election for the state House seat previously held by Speaker David Ralston, who had died the previous month.
“I’ve not done anything wrong here,” Pritchard said at the time, asserting that his sentence had ended long ago and his rights had been restored, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported. “I guess if you’re apprehending public enemy No. 1, here I am.”
Pritchard has said on his show that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” the Atlanta newspaper wrote. It said he also had criticized Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and Republican Attorney General Chris Carr for being “complicit” in Biden’s victory in Georgia.
“I do not believe that 81 million people voted for this guy,” Pritchard said on his show.
Jason Shepherd, a former vice chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, told USA TODAY that the judge’s decision is ironic given Pritchard’s constant claims of election fraud.
Pritchard, he said, “has rapidly risen in the ranks of the Georgia Republican Party and has built a media empire of literally tens of dozens of followers by spouting conspiracy theories about stolen elections and rampant voter fraud from thousands of illegal voters, despite being investigated himself for illegally voting.”
Shephard, who writes the Peach Pundit political column, said the accusations of Pritchard’s voter fraud “have been well known long before he became the second highest officer in the Georgia Republican Party.”
“He should have never been elected and he has now needs to go…and sooner rather than later,” Shephard said. “If (Georgia GOP) Chairman Josh McKoon doesn’t have a resignation by the end of the day, I don’t see how anyone can take the Georgia Republican Party seriously.”
It’s Time to Give Up the Lie We Keep Telling Ourselves About Donald Trump
Susan Matthews – March 28, 2024
If you’re an American news consumer, it’s hard to escape feeling like you’ve been suspended in a state of limbo over the course of the past year or so. The election—it’s coming, but it’s not here yet; well, not quite. Much of America isn’t really paying attention right now, avoiding at all costs the feeling of impending doom inherent to the election rematch no one wants—and I don’t blame them. We all know Trump is coming back to dominate our news feeds again, just as we know that he never really went away, he just finally became possible to turn off for a while. I understand the desire to tune it out, for now, for as long as we can, for just a little bit longer.
But the problem is that Donald Trump, presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States, is coming back. Just as he battles as hard as he can on every front possible to evade the justice system (though it’s approaching at a rapid clip), and as the Republican Party’s base remains at his beck and call, he is coming back to terrorize America again, which means the Trump show is coming back on, to every television screen near you, no matter what channel you want to tune in to.
The problem is that Season 2—or whatever season we are in at this point—is going to be much worse in so many key ways compared to the last one. The last one had the element of surprise, which kept things shocking for a while in a way that was honestly a bit distracting and roller coaster-y, like when a detective show gives you the cliffhanger just before it streams right through to the next episode. So we all watched and watched because it was ever-present and just a little bit titillating.
But it’s not just that it’s boring this time—even though it is so boring. It is going to be worse this time in the sense that the stakes are higher, the violence is more flagrant, and the way out is harder and harder to see. Nothing—not all of the plaintive and ongoing pleas from us members of the press to remember how awful Trump is and snap out of it—makes this as clear as the documentary Stormy does.
Ahead of Trump’s first criminal trial, now set for April 15 in Manhattan, Stormy happens to be the perfect memory refresher, and not just about all of the horrific things that have happened to Stormy Daniels since she became national news. Watching this documentary brought me right back into hours and hours spent watching White House press conferences, the whole tone immediately recalling the feeling of the chaotic first years of Trump’s presidency, when “the resistance” was only slightly embarrassing as a concept and there was still real solidarity in opposing the president. Oh my god, right, I thought, watching Michael Avenatti’s rise to fame. We were just desperately looking for someone—literally anyone—to save us. For a while, sure, it felt convincing that a brash lawyer who loved the spotlight as much as Donald Trump does might be that person. Oops, it turns out he was embezzling from literally all of his clients. What a twist!
There is a deeper message in Stormy, though, and one that makes it even more understandable why we’ve all wanted to tune out, while simultaneously underscoring the reason why we have to tune back in. As much as the first two-thirds of the documentary are a romp through the hilarity found in a “Make America Horny Again” tour, the documentary takes a turn after showing a few videos from Jan. 6, 2021. It cuts to the more recent past, to the indictment, to Daniels reading through tweets, something she does a lot during the documentary. These later tweets are … a lot worse than what she reads early on. I don’t know exactly what percentage of that can be attributed to how much worse Twitter, aka X, has gotten after Elon Musk’s takeover (certainly some). But the brazenness of the violence is several degrees higher than it was before.
Part of that increase in the violence—and the ho-hum response we’ve all been giving it—feels like it stems from the fact that their guy isn’t in office anymore; it’s much easier to laugh things off from a position of power. And, on the flip side, there’s so much more reckless desperation from the brink of irrelevance, where Trump’s supporters surely found themselves as their hero was indicted again and again. But Jan. 6 also opened doors that legitimately changed what was thought of as normal speech—we’ve spent years since then watching Republicans downplay and minimize what happened, calling the violence freedom, and its perpetrators “political prisoners.” The message stuck. The thugs think they are righteous. That was always Trump’s goal.
The worse reminder in Stormy is of the misogyny that living through Trump being the main event of all of our lives brings with it. This is a chance to rewatch the infamous Access Hollywood tape for the first time in a while. This is a chance to see what it means to be Stormy Daniels, a woman who seems to own her sexuality—and who also is constantly surrounded by men, most of whom seem to be fucking her or fucking her over. This is a woman who insists that what happened between her and Donald Trump wasn’t rape—and then admits later on that the way she felt when Trump cornered her in her hotel room is the way she felt when she was 9 years old being molested by her neighbor, and oh yeah, that trauma probably does have something to do with how she got into porn, if she thinks about it.
The past eight years of being a woman in this country has been to ride the roller coaster from Access Hollywood to #MeToo through the Kavanaugh hearings and eventually into losing Roe. It’s amazing that in the midst of all that, having a president who calls one of his former sexual partners “horseface” still ranks as something to be mad about. But Donald Trump is coming back—and when he does, he will give us something to be mad about every stupid day. And we won’t be able to turn it off, because once again, he’ll be the star of the show.
Just three weapons will turn the Ukraine war back around. And the USA is back in the fight
David Axe – March 27, 2024
A Ukrainian artillery piece fires on Russian positions. Artillery, and supplies of artillery shells, have been crucial factors in the Ukrainian fighting – Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty
Six months after blocking US president Joe Biden’s proposal to spend another $61 billion on aid to Ukraine, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson – who alone can schedule votes in the narrowly Republican-controlled legislative body – seems to have reversed his opposition to Ukraine’s war effort.
With retirements and special elections having reduced his majority to just two votes out of 438, and with a small contingent of far-right Republican extremists refusing to vote on any bill that has bipartisan support, Johnson increasingly relies on Democrats to enact budgets and other legislation.
And that means he answers more to the Democratic agenda than the Republican one. And strong support for Ukraine is a Democratic priority. The US House is on vacation until the first week of April. But once it reconvenes, Johnson will call a vote on fresh aid to Ukraine, according to some of his House colleagues.
With tens of billions of dollars in fresh funding, the US Defence Department could send a lot of weapons to Ukraine – and soon. Some could come straight from existing US stocks, with the new funding paying for newly-built weapons to replenish these stocks. Others could come from new commercial contracts brokered by the Pentagon.
It’s obvious what the priorities should be.
First and foremost, Ukraine needs artillery shells. For the first 18 months of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine, the United States was the main supplier of artillery ammo to Ukrainian batteries. In total, the Americans donated around two million shells. Half came straight from American magazine stockpiles. The other half, America quietly bought from South Korea.
These shells, along with additional ammo from other sources, kept Ukrainian guns blasting away at a rate of around 10,000 rounds a day for much of the war’s first year and a half. That was enough to match Russian batteries once the Russians burned through much of their ammo stockpile in the wider war’s first few weeks.
The Republican funding blockade, and the subsequent run down of US supplied munitions through the end of last year, cut by two-thirds the Ukrainians’ daily allotment of shells. In some of the darkest days of the war in February, as a pair of Russian field armies closed in on the Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern city of Avdiivka, Russian guns were firing five times as many rounds as Ukrainian guns were – and demolishing Ukrainian defence s without fear of return fire.
The US Army has been building a new shell factory in Texas to complement its existing factory in Pennsylvania. Soon, the Army should be capable of producing around 70,000 shells a month – a sixfold increase over its 2022 production rate.
There’s no reason most of the shells can’t go to Ukraine, once there’s funding to pay for each $5,000 round. Combined with shells from the European Union as well as a separate Czech initiative, urgent shipments of shells from the United States could give Ukraine an enduring artillery advantage for the first time in the wider war.
Once the shells are shipping, the Americans can address Ukraine’s second-greatest need: Patriot air-defence batteries and missiles for these batteries. The US-made Patriot is Ukraine’s best air-defence system. Its 90-mile-range missiles can reliably shoot down all but the fastest Russian missiles – and swat down Russian warplanes like flies.
When the Ukrainian air force shot down 13 Russian fighter-bombers in 13 days last month, it was apparently a mobile Patriot battery that did most of the shooting.
But Ukraine has just three Patriot batteries with around three dozen launchers – and lost a pair of those launchers in a devastating rocket ambush in early March. The batteries are spread thin. One normally protects Kyiv. Another protects Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic port on the Black Sea. The third battery apparently travels the front line in order to engage Russian jets.
Ideally, Ukraine would place a $1-billion Patriot battery in each of its half-dozen biggest cities and also assign one each to the eastern and southern fronts. And these batteries should be free to fire away at their fastest rate – meaning they’ll need a steady supply of missiles, each of which costs around $3 million.
Doubling or tripling Ukraine’s Patriot force could help the Ukrainians wrest back control of the air over the front line – and also reverse the disturbing trend toward bigger and bloodier Russian missile-strikes on Ukrainian cities.
Having replenished Ukraine’s artillery and air-defences, the United States should rescue one of the Ukrainian army’s best brigades. The 47th Mechanized Brigade is the main operator of American-made armoured vehicles, including M-1 Abrams tanks and M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles.
The 69-ton M-1 and 42-ton M-2 – thickly armoured and armed with a 120-millimetre cannon and a 25-millimetre autocannon, respectively – are some of the best armoured vehicles in the world, and the 47th Brigade has put them to good use. Counterattacking Russian assault groups west of Avdiivka, the M-1 and M-2s have blunted Russia’s winter offensive – and minimized Ukraine’s territorial losses as its artillery supplies bottomed out.
But the Americans shipped just 31 M-1s and around 200 M-2s before Republicans cut off aid. Four of the M-1s and more than 30 of the M-2s have been destroyed and others damaged. The 47th Brigade is running out of vehicles.
The US Army has thousands of older M-1s and M-2s in storage. They’d need overhaul before going to war in Ukraine, but a billion dollars should be enough to pay for the work as well as expedited shipping.
Once Speaker of the House Johnson bends to Americans’ overwhelming support for a free Ukraine and finally brings aid to a vote, the Pentagon could speed hundreds of tanks and fighting vehicles to the Ukrainian army.
Trump earlier in the day released a video of himself holding the $60 “God Bless The USA Bible” as he insisted that the Bible is his favorite book and that he has “many” in his home.
“Many? Many? Many?” Klepper repeated in disbelief. “How does that thing not burst into flames immediately?”
Trump’s version of the book, done with country singer Lee Greenwood, contains the lyrics to Greenwood’s hit song “God Bless The USA” ― which is played at Trump rallies ― as well as the texts of the Pledge of Allegiance, the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
“Trump is mashing together the Bible and the Constitution like it’s a Pizza Hut-Taco Bell,” Klepper cracked. “I know people will say that you’re not supposed to mix the Bible and the Constitution, but what you have to understand is Trump has never read either of them.”
Klepper also predicted where this would lead.
“Trump getting into business with God can only mean one thing: God is gonna end up bankrupt and serving a three-month prison sentence for lying under oath,” he said.
See more in his Tuesday night “Daily Show” monologue:
Here’s who could be responsible for paying for the Baltimore bridge disaster
Erin Snodgrass – March 26, 2024
Scroll back up to restore default view.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed after a container ship collided with it.
Several entities will likely be on the hook to foot the bill in the aftermath of the disaster.
The maritime insurance industry will be saddled with the highest costs.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore collapsed on Tuesday after a large container ship ran into it, leading to six presumed deaths and millions of dollars in possible damage.
It’s still too early to estimate the total economic impact of the disaster, but between the cost of rebuilding the decades-old bridge, compensating the victims’ families, and paying out damages for disruptions to the supply chain, the eventual cost of the disaster is expected to be significant.
Who will pay to rebuild the bridge?
President Joe Biden said on Tuesday the federal government should be responsible for paying to reconstruct the damaged Francis Scott Key Bridge.
“It is my intention that the federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge, and I expect Congress to support my effort,” Biden said.
The bridge was built in the 1970s for about $60 million, but the cost of rebuilding it could be 10 times its original price tag, an engineering expert told Sky News.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge, named for Francis Scott Key, the author of the Star Spangled Banner.WilliamSherman via Getty Images
Baltimore is among the busiest ports in the nation, seeing more than a million shipping containers pass through each year. The collapse — which closed the port to all maritime and most road traffic until further notice — is already beginning to wreak havoc on the supply chain.
The cost of building the bridge back fast enough to offset diversions as much as possible could saddle the government with a more than $600 million bill, David MacKenzie, chair of engineering and architecture consultancy COWIfonden, told Sky News.
Who will pay for damages to the ship and its cargo?
The container ship, the Dali, is owned by a Singapore-based firm. The ship’s charterer, Maersk, confirmed to Business Insider that vessel company Synergy Group operates the ship.
However, the companies with cargo aboard the Dali will ultimately be responsible for the ship’s damages and cargo costs.
The Dali was carrying 330 containers, which now must be re-routed, according to Ryan Petersen, CEO of supply chain logistics company Flexport, which had two containers on the ship.
An ancient maritime law known as “general average” dictates that companies with even a single container aboard a ship have to split the damages pro rata based on the number of containers, ensuring all the stakeholders benefiting from the voyage are splitting the risk, Petersen said.
Drone footage shows aftermath of the Dali container ship’s collision into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 26, 2024.Anadolu Agency via Reuters
The principle dates back hundreds of years and was originally meant to ensure sailors on board a ship weren’t worried about specific cargo if a disaster required them to start throwing containers overboard, according to Petersen.
Who will pay for everything else?
The majority of the financial fallout is likely to lay primarily with the insurance industry, according to media reports.
Industry experts told FT that insurers could pay out losses for bridge damage, port disruption, and any loss of life.
The collapse could drive “one of the largest claims ever to hit the marine (re)insurance market,” John Miklus, president of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters, told Insurance Business.
He told the outlet that the loss of revenue from tolls while the bridge is being rebuilt will be expensive, as will any liability claims from deaths or injuries.
The Dali is covered by the Britannia Steam Ship Insurance Association Ltd., known as Britannia P&I Club, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Britannia did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider but told FT it was “working closely with the ship manager and relevant authorities to establish the facts and to help ensure that this situation is dealt with quickly and professionally.”
Britannia is one of 12 mutual insurers included in the International Group of P&I Clubs, which maintains more than $3 billion of reinsurance cover, sources familiar with the matter told Insurance Business.
Britannia itself is liable for the first $10 million in damages, both FT and Insurance Business reported. Whatever remains is dealt with by the wider mutual insurance group and Lloyd’s of London, a reinsurance market in the UK, according to FT.
Mumbai becomes Asian capital with most billionaires, bumping Shanghai: Report
Filip Timotija – March 27, 2024
The city of Mumbai has officially surpassed Shanghai as Asia’s capital with the most billionaires, according to a new Hurun Global Rich List 2024 report.
Mumbai, India’s financial powerhouse, now has 92 billionaires, closely edging out Beijing’s 91 and Shanghai with 87.
This year’s list marked Mumbai’s first time in the world’s top three, according to the report.
Globally, the Big Apple still leads the way. New York City has the most billionaires with 119. London was second with 97. Beijing, which was ranked first last year, dropped to fourth place.
China has the most billionaires out of any country with 814, although it lost 155 of them. The U.S. was second with 800 billionaires. India was third with 271.
“Wealth creation in China has gone through deep changes these last few years, with the wealth of billionaires from real estate and renewables down,” the research firm said in the report.
“Whilst as many as 40% of the Hurun Global Rich List from the high water mark two years ago have lost their billionaires status, China has added a 120 new faces to the list. Despite the large drop in the number of billionaires, China still has more known billionaires than the US.”
Zhong Shanshan, chair of bottled water giant Nongfu Spring, kept his spot as the richest person in China.
Globally, the number of billionaires increased — now at 3,279 billionaires, up 167 from last year, according to the report.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has helped generate new ultra-wealthy individuals.
“AI has been the major driver for wealth growth, generating over half of all the new wealth this year,” the research firm said. “The billionaires behind Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle and Meta have seen significant surges in their wealth as investors bet on the value generated by AI.”
India’s Income Inequality Is Now Worse Than Under British Rule, New Report Says
Astha Rajvanshi – March 27, 2024
A fisherman colony alongside commercial buildings in the Indian city of Mumbai, now Asia’s billionaire capital. Credit – Dhiraj Singh—Bloomberg/Getty Images
A new study from the World Inequality Lab finds that the present-day golden era of Indian billionaires has produced soaring income inequality in India—now among the highest in the world and starker than in the U.S., Brazil, and South Africa. The gap between India’s rich and poor is now so wide that by some measures, the distribution of income in India was more equitable under British colonial rule than it is now, according to the group of economists who co-authored the study, including the renowned French economist Thomas Piketty.
The current total number of billionaires in India is peaking at 271, with 94 new billionaires added in 2023 alone, according to Hurun Research Institute’s 2024 global rich list published Tuesday. That’s more new billionaires than in any country other than the U.S., with a collective wealth that amounts to nearly $1 trillion—or 7% of the world’s total wealth. A handful of Indian tycoons, such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, and Sajjan Jindal, are now mingling in the same circles as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, some of the world’s richest people.
“The Billionaire Raj headed by India’s modern bourgeoisie is now more unequal than the British Raj headed by the colonialist forces,” the authors write.
The observation is particularly stark when considering India is now hailed as an 8% GDP growth economy, according to Barclays Research, with some projecting that India is poised to surpass Japan and Germany to become the world’s third-largest economy by 2027.
But the authors of the World Inequality Lab study reached this conclusion by tracking how much of India’s total income, as well as wealth, is held by the country’s top 1%. While income refers to the sum of earnings, interest on savings, investments and other sources, wealth (or net worth) is the total value of assets owned by an individual or group. The authors combined national income accounts, wealth aggregates, tax tabulations, rich lists, and surveys on income, consumption, and wealth to present the study’s findings.
For income, the economists looked at annual tax tabulations released by both the British and Indian governments since 1922. They found that even during the highest recorded period of inequality in India, which occurred during the inter-war colonial period from the 1930s until India’s independence in 1947, the top 1% held around 20 to 21% of the country’s national income. Today, the 1% holds 22.6% of the country’s income.
Similarly, the economists also tracked the dynamics of wealth inequality, beginning in 1961, when the Indian government first began conducting large-scale household surveys on wealth, debt and assets. By combining this research with information from the Forbes Billionaire Index, the authors found that India’s top 1% had access to a staggering 40.1% of national wealth.
Because the number of Indian billionaires shot up from one in 1991 to 162 in 2022, the total net wealth of these individuals over this period as a share of India’s net national income “boomed from under 1% in 1991 to a whopping 25% in 2022,” the authors said.
The report also found that the rise in inequality had been particularly pronounced since the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party first came to power in 2014. Over the last decade, major political and economic reforms have led to “an authoritarian government with centralization of decision-making power, coupled with a growing nexus between big business and government,” the report states. This, they say, was likely to “facilitate disproportionate influence” on society and government.
They added that average Indians, and not just the Indian elite, could still stand to gain from globalization if the government made more public investments in health, education, and nutrition. Moreover, a “super tax” of 2% on the net wealth of the 167 wealthiest Indian families in 2022-23 would result in 0.5% of national income in revenues, and “create valuable fiscal space to facilitate such investments,” the authors argued.
Until the government makes such investments, however, the authors caution against the possibility of India’s slide toward plutocracy. The country was once a role model among post-colonial nations for upholding the integrity of various key institutions, the authors say, and they point out that even the standard of economic data in India to study inequality has declined recently.
“If only for this reason, income and wealth inequality in India must be closely tracked and challenged,” the authors say.
It is an overcast, unseasonably warm morning on Wednesday, Nov. 6, and the world has woken up in shock as Donald Trump has emerged as the winner of the U.S. presidential election. America’s cities are once again full of mute, stunned liberals avoiding eye contact with one another on the morning commute, as the grim reality of what Trump might do with this power begins to set in. At his victory speech just after 2 a.m., when the networks called Wisconsin, and thus the election for him, Trump took the stage and declared, “Judgment Day is coming for America’s enemies, and no Marxist, Harvard leftist, gender-radical, illegal, or criminal thug in our great country will be safe come January.” And in some ways that bleak morning might represent the high point of the next four—or 40—years, given what Trump and his allies have in store for us.
This is a worst-case scenario. But it’s far from impossible. A Trump restoration is in the works—and it should feel like an existential threat to everyone who cares about liberal democracy and the incomplete but tangible social, racial, and economic progress that has been made since the New Deal era.
And yet, President Joe Biden’s manifest flaws are dangerously obscuring the scale of the threat of a second Trump term. There is no sense in denying it: Biden looks and sounds very old, and his speaking style, never particularly inspirational, has deteriorated to the point that he is a clear political liability. While he brought what passes for his A-game to the State of the Union, he will need to sustain that level of energy and coherence through an eight-month-long slog to the election to improve his chances of winning.
His decision to run for a second term has not only jeopardized his many achievements but put the very existence of U.S. democracy at much more serious risk. His administration’s staunch support of Israel, a defensible posture in the aftermath of the unconscionable Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, has become a genuinely baffling study in Biden’s inability to pivot or use America’s considerable leverage to do the right thing. The White House hasn’t settled on a winning strategy to address the lingering consequences of post-pandemic inflation, preferring to boast about the very real low unemployment numbers and robust GDP growth that simply have not moved the needle politically. And the Biden administration has remained curiously inert in the face of growing public frustration with the migrant crisis, preferring to blame Congress for refusing to fix it.
Nevertheless, allowing Donald Trump and his friends to plunge our country into a dystopian nightmare of authoritarianism will not help anyone in Gaza, in the grocery store, or at the border. It will worsen, not rectify, America’s history of writing blank checks to far-right governments in Israel. It will not lead to humane policy options for asylum-seekers but instead deliver them into the hands of morally bankrupt demagogues. Electing Trump would merely add more considerable suffering and trauma to theirs, and deprive us all of the ability to do anything about it.
Much has been made of the far-right Project 2025—a blueprint for radically restructuring and reorienting executive-branch policymaking, created by a network of right-wing think tanks and pressure groups—and its terrifying implications for U.S. democracy. But that document concerns only the threats Trump’s reelection poses to executive-branch agencies (and contains many unresolvable contradictions between dismantling and wielding the “administrative state”). Myriad public dangers emanating from the Trump and GOP legislative agenda, as well as the possibility of an even harder-right Supreme Court, are getting far less attention. That needs to change.
Let’s start with the court. That Sonia Sotomayor, who will turn 70 this year, is still sitting on the Supreme Court means that Democrats have yet to grasp how strategic retirements work in the new hyperpartisan political order. Unlike Democrats, who still seem to view a Supreme Court seat as a personal sinecure bestowed upon the righteous for a lifetime of achievement, the leaders of the far-right judicial movement understand the stakes and will place enormous pressure on the oldest Republican appointees to retire under a second Trump term. Clarence Thomas, who has been on the court since 1991, turns 76 this year, and Samuel Alito turns 74. Even John Roberts, who would turn 70 just after Trump’s inauguration, might go.
Think about it this way: If Republicans replace this trio with three early-middle-age ideologues like Amy Coney Barrett, the court will be in the GOP’s hands until everyone reading this article is dead or nearing retirement. If Trump gets to replace Sotomayor, who suffers from a health problem (Type 1 diabetes) that significantly reduces life expectancy, the far right would have an unassailable 7–2 majority with which to remake American society for a generation.
Very little that liberals or progressives care about is likely to survive another 20 or 30 years of reactionary control of the Supreme Court. Although much of the focus has justifiably been on Dobbs, and the looming threat to Obergefell, birth control, and IVF, a conservative supermajority would also likely gut a century of jurisprudence around taken-for-granted features of the American political and economic order, including bargaining rights for organized labor, the constitutionality of federal programs like Social Security and Medicare, and—it nearly goes without saying—the Affordable Care Act. We will effectively return to the early 20th century’s Lochner era, when the Supreme Court repeatedly struck down worker protections and rights for more than 30 years until FDR threatened it with court packing.
Sure, “Vote for Biden so the conservative supermajority can’t get younger and larger” is tough to fit on a bumper sticker, and no one in the party from Biden on down seems to have the stomach for the necessary escalation or a political vision for the court that can be communicated to voters. But unless you want to spend the rest of your lives watching Brett Kavanaugh and his friends upend your lives one right and benefit at a time, you have to hold the line here.
SCOTUS is, of course, also right now at the very center of Trump’s threat to American democracy. The court’s galling decision to repeatedly delay Trump’s trial for the 2020 post-election coup attempt and the Jan. 6 insurrection means that he probably won’t face justice until after he could conceivably win reelection. Most concerningly, this off-the-rails Supreme Court has bafflingly decided to take up the question of a president’s absolute immunity after Trump’s team argued that he should be free from any consequences of anything he did as president. Though cooler heads may in the end prevail over the Thomas-Alito wing, the fact that this is up for debate at all is incredibly alarming.
Much has been made of reports that Trump plans to deploy the military to quell post-election protests under the Insurrection Act. But a Trump unchained from any conceivable repercussions for his decisions in his office is a far worse threat than just that. Imagine for a moment what would happen if the Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor: First of all, the effort to hold him accountable for trying to overthrow the American system of government would be over—instantly. Even more problematically, what conceivable limits would there be on a President Trump beginning in 2025 if SCOTUS has just ruled that his efforts to perpetrate a coup in broad daylight were well within the ambit of his presidential authority?
Who or what exactly would stop Trump from, say, creating a new security apparatus, abducting leftists and political enemies—as he has pledged—and dropping them out of helicopters over the Pacific like the Latin American dictators the far right still worshipsonce did? He could order the hits, then preemptively pardon the people who carry out his orders. That might seem melodramatic and far-fetched. But if the Supreme Court grants him immunity as president, no one could touch him for it legally. And if Republicans simultaneously controlled both chambers of Congress, there would be no impeachment option either. We’ve learned the hard way, far too many times, that a critical mass of elected Republicans will do Trump’s bidding no matter how grotesque his actions.
Maybe he’ll stop short of creating an American Stasi. But a president who is unbound by the law could order the DOJ to gin up investigations of leading journalists, prominent Democrats, professors, activists, and nonprofit leaders. Independent media outlets could be “acquired” by allies or buried under lawsuits and government harassment, as they have been in Trump’s favorite quasi-authoritarian regime in Hungary. Troops could be deployed to garrison blue cities, to not only find and deport immigrants but also chill and repress any dissident fervor that develops in the aftermath of his takeover. He would say he’s merely fighting crime, “illegals,” and election fraud, but Trump could conceivably place the cities he fears and despises, where his political adversaries wield most of their power and influence, under what amounts to an open-ended military occupation.
It gets worse. If Donald Trump wins the 2024 election, he is highly likely to do so while bringing Republican control of the House and Senate with him. With Mitch McConnell out of the way as party leader, there is a very good chance that the new GOP Senate leadership will nuke the filibuster and govern with a simple majority. And that means that the toxic, vengeful politics of Texas and Florida will go national. Trump showed time and again during his first term that he was not just willing but eager to subcontract his domestic policymaking to the right-wing think tanks that write most state-level legislation for Republicans. National Republicans no longer pretend to have a written or informal platform, but Trump has a campaign website with policy plans called “Agenda 47” that can be read alongside Project 2025, as well as the actual policy record of state Republicans, to give us a pretty clear sense of what they have planned.
Trump continues to spin and deflect, but under unified Republican control, Congress could obviously try to pass a national abortion ban, and he would sign it. House Republicans are already gunning for a nationwide ban on gender-affirming care, and electing a Republican trifecta this November will mean that, practically speaking, it could soon be either illegal or impossible to be transgender in the United States. The proof is in the hundreds of red-state anti-trans bills introduced and the dozens passed just since 2023, including Florida’s ban on gender reassignment surgery for minors, which also gives the state the right to kidnap children from parents who pursue gender-affirming care. Agenda 47 claims that the Trump administration will “investigate Big Pharma and the big hospital networks to determine whether they have deliberately covered up horrific long-term side-effects of ‘sex transitions’ in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients.” As Masha Gessen once said, “Believe the autocrat.”
The enemies list doesn’t stop there. Trump’s promised militarized mass-deportation effort could be just the beginning of the crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration; we could also see an effort to end birthright citizenship, a move that, if it succeeds, would result in millions being suddenly stripped of their status as Americans. You will find this not in Project 2025 but in Trump’s online platform and the ugly words that frequently spill out of his mouth, like in May 2023, when he posted a video in which he argued, “I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship.” Whether you believe the “going forward” part of that promise is up to you.
And get ready for a flurry of moves against the remaining redoubts of liberalism and democracy, particularly in secondary and higher education. Radicalized Republicans in Congress will try to bar federal loans and grants from being used at any universities with policies that support inclusion and diversity. This is not speculation: Rep. Dan Crenshaw introduced a bill in the House last year to prevent public funds from being used at schools with DEI policies, based on existing Texas legislation.
They won’t stop there. Republicans would eventually try to block funding for schools with any kind of race or gender studies programs, as the state of Florida tried to do last year, and before long every syllabus in the country could be scrutinized for evidence of anti-patriotic crimes, until anyone who isn’t a right-wing ideologue is driven from the academy altogether. Trump’s Agenda 47 promises to establish a new national “American Academy” by “by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments”—i.e., strip-mining them for cash. A Trump administration, in other words, would effectively end American higher education as we know it.
That’s to say nothing of how, under GOP rule, every public school librarian and schoolteacher in America could suddenly find themselves under siege by cranks and culture warriors like their counterparts today in Texas and Florida. Agenda 47 threatens to create a new “credentialing body” that would “certify teachers who embrace patriotic values,” to eliminate teacher tenure, and to rescind funding “for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory, gender ideology, or other inappropriate racial, sexual, or political content.” And like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Trump would surely relish the opportunity to sign legislation banning public school teachers from going on strike.
This radical agenda would surely be accompanied by an assault on Democrats’ ability to ever win another free and fair election. Congress would pursue a national voter ID law, a ban on ballot harvesting, harsh new restrictions on mail-in balloting, the elimination of same-day voter registration, and new ways to purge Democrats from voter lists—all plans that are already in the “American Confidence in Elections Act,” which has been introduced in the House. What’s left of the Voting Rights Act would be set aside or perhaps repealed. Maniacs exercising their “constitutional carry” rights would patrol outside polling stations across the country with AR-15s, and Democratic voters would be subjected to endless legal challenges. Any Democratic effort to retake a chamber of Congress in 2026 or win the presidency in 2028 would have to run through President Trump’s formidable election conspiracy machine, the army of aspiring petty autocrats who will be put in charge of the nation’s election machinery, and the elected leaders who will come under enormous pressure not to turn power over to Democrats should those Democrats win.
At that point, the vaunted separation of powers that some analysts still cling to as our last great hope won’t be of much help. With as many as seven Trump judges on the Supreme Court and a federal judiciary that will once again be stocked with his allies and true believers, even many of the brazenly unconstitutional orders and laws that are in the works will have a good chance of standing up in court. And all the while, demoralized Democrats will be pointing fingers at one another for their catastrophic loss, which—knowing Dems—could easily be pinned on Biden’s more progressive policies like the Inflation Reduction Act, whose historic climate provisions would also be reversed almost immediately. Efforts to highlight the contributions of his age and Gaza policies to this disaster would run straight into the same narrative-makers who pinned the disappointing scale of Democrats’ 2020 victory on progressive activists chanting “Defund the Police” rather than on Biden’s overcautious campaign and reliance on appealing to disenchanted Republicans.
It’s not hyperbole to say that the America that a second Trump term would create might be an almost unrecognizable realm of economic insecurity, political persecution, racist hatred, and gender tyranny, a Christian nationalist hellscape that would be virtually impossible to dismantle once it is put into place.
Joe Biden may not be the ideal man standing between us and this horror show, but he is a seasoned politician with a strong track record and a plenty competent team. (Plus, he’s all there is unless he decides to step aside.) He and every Democrat in the White House and Congress must do everything they can to shift the focus from Biden’s age and unpopularity to Trump’s very public laundry list of malevolent plans, and national media organizations must continue to do the relatively easy work of telling readers and viewers about Trump’s reactionary agenda. Readers may be completely burned out on learning about Trump’s crimes, but the alternative—that Trump gets into office and perpetrates more of them—is truly unthinkable.
Trump ally Clark attempted ‘coup’ at US Justice Dept, ethics counsel says
Andrew Goudsward – March 26, 2024
FILE PHOTO: Justice Department makes announcement on opioids settlement in Washington
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Jeffrey Clark, a former senior official in the U.S. Justice Department, made false claims as he attempted to enlist the agency in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to undo his 2020 election loss, a Washington ethics lawyer said on Tuesday.
Clark is facing a disciplinary hearing which could see him lose his license to practice law. Trump tried to put Clark in charge of the Justice Department in his administration’s final days as Clark sought to pursue the former president’s false claims of widespread voter fraud.
“What Mr. Clark was attempting to do was essentially a coup at the Department of Justice,” Hamilton “Phil” Fox, the District of Columbia Bar disciplinary counsel said in his opening argument.
Harry MacDougald, a lawyer representing Clark, denied that Clark had violated attorney ethics rules. He said Clark was engaged in “internal debate and disagreement” within the department about the impact of voter fraud on the election.
“Mr. Clark should not be here for giving his candid opinion and independent judgment,” MacDougald said.
Clark, who served as acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division under Trump, faces a multi-day hearing on ethics charges that accuse him of attempting to take actions “involving dishonesty” and that “would seriously interfere with the administration of justice.”
Clark sought to send a letter to Georgia officials in December 2020 falsely claiming that the Justice Department had “identified significant concerns” that may have led to Trump’s loss in that state, according to ethics charges filed in 2022.
The hearing is being held by a three-member committee of the Board on Professional Responsibility, an arm of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. If it finds that Clark violated ethics rules, it could recommend that his license be suspended or revoked. The full board would take up such a recommendation, with final action in the hands of the appeals court.
The D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates lawyers accused of violating legal ethics rules, brought the case against Clark.
Trump is the Republican candidate challenging Democratic President Joe Biden in the Nov. 5 U.S. election. Trump faces criminal charges in state court in Georgia and federal court in Washington over his attempts to overturn his 2020 loss to Biden.
Clark is one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Georgia case and has pleaded not guilty. Clark is listed as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the federal case. The ethics panel is expected to delve into incidents relevant to those cases.
Justice Department leaders found no evidence of widespread voter fraud and refused to send Clark’s proposed letter. Trump backed off his plan to name Clark as acting attorney general after department leaders and top White House lawyers threatened to resign in protest.
Two of Clark’s Justice Department superiors – former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, have cooperated with the ethics probe and are expected to testify during the hearing.
Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, an outspoken Trump ally, and former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows may testify on Clark’s behalf, his lawyers said.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; editing by Will Dunham, Andy Sullivan and Marguerita Choy)
Former Trump DOJ official Jeffrey Clark fights to save law license as disciplinary trial begins
Kyle Cheney – March 26, 2024
Jose Luis Magana/AP
Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department official who worked closely with former President Donald Trump in a bid to subvert the 2020 election, should face professional consequences — including the potential loss of his license to practice law — for his effort to throw the nation into chaos, D.C. bar disciplinary authorities argued Tuesday.
But a lawyer for Clark said it would be unreasonable to punish him for his work during the tumultuous days ahead of Jan. 6, 2021, when he spearheaded a proposal to encourage state legislatures to consider overturning the results. That plan was never adopted and Trump ultimately turned it down. Punishing Clark for being on the losing side of a policy dispute would set a dangerous precedent, Clark’s team argued.
The alternate realities were on display Tuesday as bar investigators began laying out their case to penalize Clark for his role in Trump’s scheme to remain in power. Investigators charged Clark with violating professional rules of conduct in late 2020 by attempting to coerce his bosses to send a letter to Georgia lawmakers encouraging them to reconsider the outcome of the election there based on “significant concerns” about the integrity of the vote.
For Clark, the opening arguments in the case — heard by a three-member panel of the D.C. Bar’s Board of Professional Responsibility — were never supposed to happen. Clark has spent two years fighting legal battles intended to scrap the case altogether, contending that the D.C. Bar has no jurisdiction over the conduct of federal government lawyers. But a federal court rejected Clark’s position, and an appeals court declined to step in to block the case from moving ahead.
Hamilton Fox, the lead investigator for the D.C. Bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, said Clark’s efforts amounted to a “coup” attempt within the Department of Justice, aimed at taking out the sitting leadership in order to effectuate a plan that would have thrown the 2020 election into even further disarray. Clark held unauthorized talks with Trump, violating DOJ policies against White House contacts, and then sought to outflank then-Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue, by telling them he planned to accept an offer from Trump to take over the department unless they agreed to send his proposed letter to Georgia.
The showdown, which has been well documented by the Jan. 6 select committee and prosecutors in Georgia, led to an Oval Office confrontation on Jan. 3, 2021, in which Trump ultimately backed down from his plans to elevate Clark amid a mass resignation threat by top DOJ and White House officials. Clark has been criminally charged by Georgia prosecutors for his role in Trump’s effort to reverse the outcome of the election, and he was identified as a co-conspirator in special counsel Jack Smith’s Washington, D.C. case against Trump.
Donoghue was Fox’s first witness on Tuesday, describing his work to review claims of election fraud in 2020 and finding many of the fraud claims lodged by Trump and his allies to be meritless. He also described his conversations with Trump, recalling that Trump urged Rosen to simply declare the election “corrupt” and let him and his Republican allies in Congress do the rest. Donoghue recalled trying to educate Trump about DOJ’s limited role in elections and its work debunking many of the false allegations of fraud that had been circulating.
Disciplinary proceedings against the lawyers who formed the backbone of Trump’s effort have aired significant new details about the two months that threatened the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 and 2021.
John Eastman, one of the architects of Trump’s bid to subvert the 2020 election, is expected to face a disbarment ruling by Wednesday, when a California judge issues her proposed punishment for alleged violations of professional conduct.
Rudy Giuliani has similarly had his law license suspended in New York and Washington, D.C.
And other attorneys involved in failed legal efforts to overturn election results in 2020 have also faced disciplinary charges, some of which are still pending.
Clark’s case is unique, however, because he was employed by DOJ at the time as acting head of the department’s Civil Division and Environment and Natural Resources Division. He first reached Trump’s radar as a result of efforts by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), who helped connect the little-known DOJ official to the president. Trump, who had publicly expressed frustration that the Justice Department hadn’t done enough to back up his claims of election fraud, soon began floating the notion of elevating Clark to replace Rosen.
Clarks’ lawyers, though, say punishing him for taking cues from the president — the chief law enforcement officer of the United States — and advocating for a position that he genuinely believed would send a chilling effect across government. Clark’s efforts were intended to remain confidential — and the letter he drafted, which was never sent to Georgia, was supposed to remain secret, protected by various forms of executive and law enforcement privilege, until a leak to the press exposed the fraught discussions.
Clark’s attorneys said he intends to argue, using witnesses from Georgia and statistical experts that Trump has relied on in the past, that his concerns about the election were well-founded, that DOJ officials rebuffed them and the entire dispute amounts to an internal disagreement about what DOJ’s official position should have been.
“There is nothing dishonest and nothing in violation of the rules of professional conduct about proposing a change in position,” Clark’s lawyer, Harry MacDougald, argued. “Mr. Clark did nothing wrong.”
Clark is unlikely to testify in the proceeding. His lawyers have indicated he is likely to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to the stand.
Fox intends to rely on testimony from White House and DOJ officials — including Donoghue, Rosen and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin. Clark’s lawyer said he intends to call former Attorney General Edwin Meese, as well as a member of the Atlanta-area election board who opposed certifying the results.
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