Category: Democracy

Texas businesses say abortion ban costs state nearly $15 billion a year

KXAN

Texas businesses say abortion ban costs state nearly $15 billion a year

Ryan Chandler – November 20, 2023

AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Forty Texas companies and business leaders are entering the fight against Texas’ abortion ban, filing a brief with the Texas Supreme Court that argues the “ambiguity” in the laws medical exceptions cost the state an estimated $14.5 billion in lost revenue every year.

Austin-based dating app giant Bumble is leading the effort, submitting an amicus brief ahead of the high court’s arguments in Zurawski v. Texas. Lead plaintiff Amanda Zurawski is challenging the state’s abortion ban after she nearly died of sepsis due to a pregnancy complication. She says the Texas abortion ban’s vague medical exceptions prevented her doctor from providing a medically necessary abortion until she had nearly died.

Austin woman trying for baby says Texas abortion law nearly caused her death

“We feel it’s our duty not just to provide our workforce with access to reproductive health care, but to speak out – and speak loudly – against the retrogression of women’s rights,” Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said. “Texas’s confusing medical exceptions increase business costs, drive away talent, and threaten workforce diversity and well-being.”

Dozens of other companies signed onto the brief, including South by Southwest, Zilker Properties, ATX Television Festival, and Central Presbyterian Church.

The brief cites research from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) to arrive at their claim that Texas’ abortion ban costs the state nearly $15 billion annually. They assert that the ban translates to women earning less, taking more time off work, and leaving the workforce.

IWPR’s research estimates more than 80,000 women between 15 and 44 could enter the workforce without the abortion ban.

“An uncertain and confusing Texas regulatory environment is creating professional and personal difficulties for those who work and travel in Texas, as well as adversely impacting employee recruitment and retention, and creating obstacles for attracting new businesses, visitors and events,” law firm Reed Smith explained.

Supporters of Texas’ abortion ban argue the law does not preclude doctors from performing medically-necessary abortions. Rather, they say doctors are unfamiliar with the law’s exceptions.

“These stories are heartbreaking, they’re tragedies,” Texas Right to Life’s John Seago said. “Those kind of medical emergency situations clearly can be fixed by education… we have to fill in that gap to protect mothers and their children to make sure that our laws are actually protecting life, not jeopardizing life.”

The state will defend the abortion ban in front of the Texas Supreme Court on Nov. 28.

Voting Rights Act ruling is latest attempt by Trump-nominated judges to overturn Supreme Court precedent

CNN

Voting Rights Act ruling is latest attempt by Trump-nominated judges to overturn Supreme Court precedent

Joan Biskupic, Senior Supreme Court Analyst – November 20, 2023

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

A US appellate court decision Monday undercutting the Voting Rights Act of 1965 rejects decades of precedent and appears likely to provoke a confrontation at the US Supreme Court, where the milestone law has been increasingly under attack.

At stake are the voting rights of Blacks, Hispanics and other racial minorities that have been vindicated under a section of the VRA prohibiting discrimination based on race. Section 2 has helped ensure that states draw legislative and congressional districts fairly and that minority voters have an opportunity to elect candidates of their choice.

The Supreme Court – as recently as June – has reaffirmed Section 2. But US appellate judge David Stras, the author of the majority opinion in Monday’s case from Arkansas, observed that Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have called a key provision of the law into question. His ruling Monday could ultimately gut the law’s protections.

Monday’s appellate court ruling – essentially getting out ahead of the high court – seems certain to instigate a new voting-rights showdown as the nation heads into a presidential election cycle.

The decision is the latest example of former President Donald Trump’s influence over the federal judiciary. Stras, one of Trump’s first appellate court appointees, defied Supreme Court precedent to bolster a conservative interpretation of the law backed by Thomas and Gorsuch, who was Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee.

In Monday’s groundbreaking decision, the 2-to-1 panel of the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that private plaintiffs, such as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or American Civil Liberties Union, have no right to bring litigation on behalf of voters under Section 2. Stras was joined in the majority by Circuit Judge Raymond Gruender, an appointee of former President George W. Bush.

Citing Thomas and Gorsuch, Stras said it has been an “open question” as to how far the law goes. Yet that notion has never drawn as Supreme Court majority.

“For much of the last half-century,” Stras, a former Thomas law clerk, acknowledged, “courts have assumed that Section 2 is privately enforceable.”

But, he added, “A deeper look has revealed that this assumption rests on flimsy footing…”

The decision swept back the history of the legislation and longstanding court interpretations, saying Congress had failed to explicitly detail that private parties could challenge VRA violations. Only the US attorney general has that explicit right, the ruling said.

The dissenting judge countered that a foundational principle of American law is that “where there is a legal right, there is also a legal remedy.” Judge Lavenski Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, added that Congress never intended enforcement of the law – “so foundational to self-government” – to be left only to the federal government.

Conservative assault on Voting Rights Act

The justices on the contemporary court have been deeply divided over the reach of the act passed at the height of the Civil Rights movement and only after the March 1965 “Bloody Sunday” attacks on marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama.

The high court, dominated by conservative jurists, has over the past decade curtailed federal voting protections, giving states more latitude for redistricting and other electoral practices.

But last June, a 5-4 majority reinforced the act’s protections against discriminatory voting lines by invalidating an Alabama map found to have diluted Black voting power. The Alabama legislature had packed much of the state’s African American population into one district and divided the rest among other districts.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote for the slim cross-ideological majority, said Alabama’s arguments flew in the face of precedent. “The heart of these cases,” he wrote, “is not about the law as it exists. It is about Alabama’s attempt to remake our Section 2 jurisprudence anew.”

Thomas, one of the dissenters in that case of Allen v. Milligan, specifically noted at the time: “The Court does not address whether Section 2 contains a private right of action.” Only Gorsuch joined that portion of Thomas’ dissenting opinion, which echoed a point Gorsuch made two years earlier that Thomas signed on to.

Ruling against the Arkansas State Conference NAACP, which had contended the state diminished Black voting power in redistricting, Stras said neither the text nor structure of the VRA gives private plaintiffs a clear right to sue under Section 2.

“If the 1965 Congress clearly intended to create a private right of action, then why not say so in the statute?” he wrote.

Referring to other voting-rights advocates that had joined the state NAACP, he added, “The advocacy groups argue that courts have been adjudicating Section 2 claims brought by private plaintiffs for years, so they must be available. But assuming their existence, and even discussing them, is different from actually deciding that a private right of action exists.”

That contradicts longstanding Supreme Court and lower federal court interpretations of the law, Chief Judge Smith wrote in his dissent.

“Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection,” Smith said, citing research showing that “over the past forty years, there have been at least 182 successful Section 2 cases; only 15 were brought solely by the Attorney General.”

Smith contended the 8th Circuit majority should have left resolution of whether Section 2 can be invoked by private plaintiffs to the justices – rather than trying to “predict the Supreme Court’s future decisions.”

Trump has big plans for a second term. Critics say they pose a threat to democracy.

Yahoo! News

Trump has big plans for a second term. Critics say they pose a threat to democracy.

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 20, 2023

Donald Trump in 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Donald Trump in 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign is developing plans to use the federal government to punish his political opponents if he wins a second term next year, and critics — including some prominent Republicans, even some staffers from his first term — say these plans would imperil American democracy.

On the campaign trail, Trump has made numerous public references to exacting revenge upon detractors and rivals, including promising to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden for unspecified crimes. Earlier this month, in a speech and in a post on Truth Social, he referred to left-wing Americans as “vermin.”

Historians said such dehumanizing of one’s political opponents is frequently used by fascist dictators. Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded by saying, “Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.”

According to the Washington Post, Trump has privately said he would direct the Department of Justice to investigate officials from his first term who have since criticized his tenure, including:

  • Former White House chief of staff and retired U.S. Marine Corps Gen. John F. Kelly
  • Former Attorney General William P. Barr
  • Former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark A. Milley
  • Former Trump White House special counsel Ty Cobb
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in 2022. (Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty Images)
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley in 2022. (Ting Shen/Xinhua via Getty Images) (Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images)

According to his advisers, Trump intends to fire up to tens of thousands of career government professionals and replace them with his allies, and ​​will refuse to spend congressional appropriations on programs he opposes.

The New York Times has reported that Trump’s plans to crack down on illegal immigration will include:

  • Using military funds to erect detention camps
  • Using a public-health emergency law to shut down asylum requests at the border
  • Ending birthright citizenship for babies born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants

Trump also reportedly plans to send the military into Mexico to combat drug cartels, with or without the Mexican government’s permission.

A number of high-profile Republican elected officials, conservative legal scholars and veterans of Trump’s first term in office have said Trump’s intentions would weaken the justice system and threaten the rule of law. Here are some of the most notable criticisms:

Former Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican from Wyoming

Former Rep. Liz Cheney.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) (Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images)

“He cannot be the next president, because if he is, all of the things that he attempted to do, but was stopped from doing by responsible people around him at the Department of Justice, at the White House Counsel’s Office, all of those things, he will do. There will be no guardrails.”

Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House and campaign press aide

“His policies are not centered around improving the lives of his supporters or Americans in general, it’s centered around consolidating power for Trump, and that way he can wield it to enact that revenge on anyone he deems as an enemy. And that is what is scary.”

Former federal appeals court Judge Michael Luttig, appointed by President George H.W. Bush, and former assistant White House counsel under President Ronald Reagan

“I am more worried for America today than I was on January 6. … [Trump’s] election would be catastrophic for America’s democracy.”

Former Trump-appointed Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

“Making prosecutorial decisions in a nonpartisan manner is essential to democracy. The White House should not be meddling in individual cases for political reasons.”

Former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton

National security adviser John Bolton in 2018.
National security adviser John Bolton in 2018. (Evan Vucci/AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

“He doesn’t think in policy directions when he makes decisions, certainly in the national security space. It’s all connected with how things benefit Donald Trump. … In a second Trump term, we’d almost certainly withdraw from NATO.”

Sen. Mitt Romney, Republican from Utah and 2012 Republican nominee for president

“Donald Trump represents a failure of character, which is changing, I think, in many respects, the psyche of our nation and the heart of our nation. And that’s something which takes a long time — if ever — to repair.”

When It Comes to Disdain for Democracy, Trump Has Company

By Jamelle Bouie – November 17, 2023

The Ohio Statehouse is lit up under a gray sky.
Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

It makes perfect sense to treat Donald Trump as the most immediate threat to the future of American democracy. He has an ambitious plan to turn the office of the presidency into an instrument of “revenge” against his political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups.

But while we keep our eyes on Trump and his allies and enablers, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that antidemocratic attitudes run deep within the Republican Party. In particular, there appears to be a view among many Republicans that the only vote worth respecting is a vote for the party and its interests. A vote against them is a vote that doesn’t count.

This is not a new phenomenon. We saw a version of it on at least two occasions in 2018. In Florida, a nearly two-thirds majority of voters backed a state constitutional amendment to effectively end felon disenfranchisement. The voters of Florida were as clear as voters could possibly be: If you’ve served your time, you deserve your ballot.

Rather than heed the voice of the people, Florida Republicans immediately set out to render it moot. They passed and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that more or less nullified the amendment by imposing an almost impossible set of requirements for felons to meet. Specifically, eligible voters had to pay any outstanding fees or fines that were on the books before their rights could be restored. Except there was no central record of those fees or fines, and the state did not have to tell felons what they owed, if anything. You could try to vote, but you risked arrest, conviction and even prison time.

In Wisconsin the same year, voters put Tony Evers, a Democrat, into the governor’s mansion, breaking eight years of Republican control. The Republican-led legislature did not have the power to overturn the election results, but the impenetrable, ultragerrymandered majority could use its authority to strip as much power from the governor as possible, blocking, among other things, his ability to withdraw from a state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — one of the things he campaigned on. Wisconsin voters would have their new governor, but he’d be as weak as Republicans could make him.

It almost goes without saying that we should include the former president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as another example of the willingness of the Republican Party to reject any electoral outcome that doesn’t fall in its favor. And although we’ve had only a few elections this year, it doesn’t take much effort to find more of the same.

I’ve already written about the attempt among Wisconsin Republicans to nullify the results of a heated race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Voters overwhelmingly backed the more liberal candidate for the seat, Janet Protasiewicz, giving the court the votes needed to overturn the gerrymander that keeps Wisconsin Republicans in power in the legislature even after they lose a majority of votes statewide.

In response, Wisconsin Republicans floated an effort to impeach the new justice on a trumped-up charge of bias. The party eventually backed down in the face of national outrage — and the danger that any attempt to remove Protasiewicz might backfire electorally in the future. But the party’s reflexive move to attempt to cancel the will of the electorate says everything you need to know about the relationship of the Wisconsin Republican Party to democracy.

Ohio Republicans seem to share the same attitude toward voters who choose not to back Republican priorities. As in Wisconsin, the Ohio legislature is so gerrymandered in favor of the Republican Party that it would take a once-in-a-century supermajority of Democratic votes to dislodge it from power. Most lawmakers in the state have nothing to fear from voters who might disagree with their actions.

It was in part because of this gerrymander that abortion rights proponents in the state focused their efforts on a ballot initiative. The Ohio legislature may have been dead set on ending abortion access in the state — in 2019, the Republican majority passed a so-called heartbeat bill banning abortion after six weeks — but Ohio voters were not.

Aware that most of the voters in their state supported abortion rights and unwilling to try to persuade them that an abortion ban was the best policy for the state, Ohio Republicans first tried to rig the game. In August the legislature asked voters to weigh in on a new supermajority requirement for ballot initiatives to amend the state Constitution. If approved, this requirement would have stopped the abortion rights amendment in its tracks.

The supermajority requirement failed. And last week, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to write reproductive rights into their state Constitution, repudiating their gerrymandered, anti-choice legislature. Or so they thought.

Not one full day after the vote, four Republican state representatives announced that they intended to do everything in their power to nullify the amendment and give lawmakers total discretion to ban abortion as they see fit. “This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law,” their statement reads. “We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.”

Notice the language: “our power” and “our laws.” There is no awareness here that the people of Ohio are sovereign and that their vote to amend the state Constitution holds greater authority than the judgment of a small group of legislators. This group may not like the fact that Ohioans have declared the Republican abortion ban null and void, but that is democracy. If these lawmakers want to advance their efforts to restrict abortion, they first need to persuade the people.

To many Republicans, unfortunately, persuasion is anathema. There is no use making an argument, since you might lose. Instead, the game is to create a system in which, heads or tails, you always win.

That’s why Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have embraced partisan gerrymanders so powerful that they undermine the claim to democratic government in the states in question. That’s why Republicans in places like North Carolina have adopted novel and dubious legal arguments about state power, the upshot of which is that they concentrate power in the hands of these gerrymandered state legislatures, giving them total authority over elections and electoral outcomes. And that’s why, months before voting begins in the Republican presidential nomination contest, much of the party has already embraced a presidential candidate who promises to prosecute and persecute his political opponents.

One of the basic ideas of democracy is that nothing is final. Defeats can become victories, and victories can become defeats. Governments change, laws change, and most important, the people change. No majority is the majority, and there’s always the chance that new configurations of groups and interests will produce new outcomes.

For this to work, however, we — as citizens — have to believe it can work. Cultivating this faith is no easy task. We have to have confidence in our ability to talk to one another, to work with one another, to persuade one another. We have to see one another, in some sense, as equals, each of us entitled to a place in this society.

It seems to me that too many Republicans have lost that faith.

U.S. and China reach a deal on fighting climate change. Here’s what it means.

Yahoo! News

U.S. and China reach a deal on fighting climate change. Here’s what it means.

Ben Adler, Senior Editor – November 15, 2023

John Kerry shakes hands with Xie Zhenhua in front of U.S. and Chinese flags.
U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua before a meeting in Beijing, China, July 17. (Valerie Volcovici/Reuters) (REUTERS)

The United States and China may be at odds over everything from the Russia-Ukraine war to the status of Taiwan, but the world’s two largest economies just showed they can still work together on climate change.

The two superpowers jointly announced on Wednesday that they’ve agreed to a deal to rapidly increase the share of energy that comes from renewable sources and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

What’s in the deal

The key new components are:

  • Committing to helping the world triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.
  • Reducing power sector emissions by the end of the decade.
  • Reducing future emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
  • Halting deforestation by 2030.
The timing
Rows of solar panels in a field against a cloudy sky.
Bifacial photovoltaic solar panels at the Roadrunner solar plant, owned and operated by Enel Green Power, near McCamey, Texas, Nov. 10. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (Bloomberg via Getty Images)
  • The deal comes as scientists express growing alarm over the quickly escalating increases in warming and effects witnessed throughout the year, such as more extreme heat waves, wildfires and storms.
  • October was just the world’s fifth consecutive month of record-high global average temperatures.
  • The U.S. National Climate Assessment released Tuesday finds climate change is now affecting every region of the country, with growing health and economic costs.
  • The next round of U.N. climate negotiations, called COP28, is set to begin on Nov. 30 in Dubai. More than 60 countries, including the U.S., have recently called for the agreement produced there to include the tripling of renewable energy goals. The G20 also embraced that target in September.

Recommended reading

What it means for climate change
A full moon hovers near the horizon against a blue sky behind a wind farm with several dozen windmills visible in a mountainous area.
The full moon sets behind a wind farm in the Mojave Desert in California, Jan. 8, 2004. (Toby Melville/Reuters) (REUTERS)
  • Experts are hailing Wednesday’s announcement as a welcome sign.
  • “It’s very promising to see the U.S. and China diplomatically engaging on climate change again, after the broader challenges in the relationship sort of brought that to a halt,” Pete Ogden, vice president for climate and environment at the United Nations Foundation, told Yahoo News. “To see that re-energized going into the COP is encouraging and hopefully something they can build on.”
  • But while the potential impact is huge, other experts note that the actual emissions reductions from this agreement is unclear.
  • “Since China’s power sector emissions are so large, any decline this decade could avoid a lot of emissions,” Jake Schmidt, senior strategic director for international climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Yahoo News.

How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025

The New York Times

How Trump and His Allies Plan to Wield Power in 2025

Jonathan Swan – November 15, 2023

Former President Donald Trump during a campaign event at Stevens High School in Claremont, N.H. on Nov. 11, 2023. (Sophie Park/The New York Times)
Former President Donald Trump during a campaign event at Stevens High School in Claremont, N.H. on Nov. 11, 2023. (Sophie Park/The New York Times)

Former President Donald Trump declared in the first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign: “I am your retribution.” He later vowed to use the Justice Department to go after his political adversaries, starting with President Joe Biden and his family.

Beneath these public threats is a series of plans by Trump and his allies that would upend core elements of American governance, democracy, foreign policy and the rule of law if he regained the White House.

Some of these themes trace back to the final period of Trump’s term in office. By that stage, his key advisers had learned how to more effectively wield power and Trump had fired officials who resisted some of his impulses and replaced them with loyalists. Then he lost the 2020 election and was cast out of power.

Since leaving office, Trump’s advisers and allies at a network of well-funded groups have advanced policies, created lists of potential personnel and started shaping new legal scaffolding — laying the groundwork for a second Trump presidency they hope will commence on Jan. 20, 2025.

In a vague statement, two top officials on Trump’s campaign have sought to distance his campaign team from some of the plans being developed by Trump’s outside allies, groups led by former senior Trump administration officials who remain in direct contact with him. The statement called news reports about the campaign’s personnel and policy intentions “purely speculative and theoretical.”

The plans described here generally derive from what Trump has trumpeted on the campaign trail, what has appeared on his campaign website and interviews with Trump advisers, including one who spoke with The New York Times at the request of the campaign.

Trump wants to use the Justice Department to take vengeance on his political adversaries.

If he wins another term, Trump has said he would use the Justice Department to have his adversaries investigated and charged with crimes, including saying in June that he would appoint “a real special prosecutor to go after” Biden and his family. He later declared in an interview with Univision that he could, if someone challenged him politically, have that person indicted.

Allies of Trump have also been developing an intellectual blueprint to cast aside the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department investigatory independence from White House political direction.

Foreshadowing such a move, Trump had already violated norms in his 2016 campaign by promising to “lock up” his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton, over her use of a private email server. While president, he repeatedly told aides he wanted the Justice Department to indict his political enemies, including officials he had fired such as James Comey, the former FBI director. The Justice Department opened various such investigations but did not bring charges — infuriating Trump and leading to a split in 2020 with his attorney general, Bill Barr.

He intends to carry out an extreme immigration crackdown.

Trump is planning an assault on immigration on a scale unseen in modern American history. Millions of immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally would be barred from the country or uprooted from it years or even decades after settling here.

Bolstered by agents reassigned from other federal law enforcement agencies and state police and the National Guard, officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement would carry out sweeping raids aimed at deporting millions of people each year. Military funds would be used to erect sprawling camps to hold detainees. A public-health emergency law would be invoked to shut down asylum requests by people arriving at the border. And the government would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to parents without legal status.

Trump has plans to use U.S. military force closer to home.

While in office, Trump mused about using the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, an idea that would violate international law unless Mexico consented. That idea has since taken on broader Republican backing, and Trump intends to make the idea a reality if he returns to the Oval Office.

While the Posse Comitatus Act generally makes it illegal to use federal troops for domestic law enforcement purposes, another law called the Insurrection Act creates an exception. Trump wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act to use troops to crack down on protesters after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, but was thwarted, and the idea remains salient among his advisers. Among other things, his top immigration adviser has said they would invoke the Insurrection Act at the southern border to use soldiers to intercept and detain migrants who enter the U.S. illegally.

Trump and his allies want greater control over the federal bureaucracy and workforce.

Trump and his backers want to increase presidential power over federal agencies, centralizing greater control over the entire machinery of government in the White House.

They have adopted a maximalist version of the so-called unitary executive theory, which says the president can directly command the entire federal bureaucracy and that it is unconstitutional for Congress to create pockets of independent decision-making authority.

As part of that plan, Trump also intends to revive an effort from the end of his presidency to alter civil-service rules that protect career government professionals, enabling him to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. After Congress failed to enact legislation to block such a change, the Biden administration is developing a regulation to essentially Trump-proof the federal workforce. However, since that is merely an executive action, the next Republican president could simply undo it the same way.

Trump allies want lawyers who will not restrain him.

Politically appointed lawyers sometimes frustrated Trump’s desires by raising legal objections to his and his top advisers’ ideas. This dynamic has led to a quiet split on the right, as Trump loyalists have come to view the typical Federalist Society lawyer — essentially a mainstream Republican conservative — with disdain.

In a potential new term, Trump’s allies are planning to systematically install more aggressive and ideologically aligned legal gatekeepers who will be more likely to bless contentious actions. Trump and his 2024 campaign declined to answer a series of detailed questions about what limits, if any, he would recognize on his powers across a range of war, secrecy and law enforcement matters — many raised by his first term — in a New York Times 2024 presidential candidate survey.

Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025

By Jamelle Bouie – November 14, 2023

A mobile billboard with a lit grid shows a Donald Trump speaking before a microphone.
Credit…Damon Winter/The New York Times

Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of plans meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.

Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.

With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies.

“If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.

As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”

Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status.

Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups, like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.

Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.

In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This, too, would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.

It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.

They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.

He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.

In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state.

As Damon Linker noted this month in his essay on these figures for Times Opinion, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”

Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.

And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.

“That’s game over”: Legal experts say new Jenna Ellis revelation is beyond “devastating” for Trump

Salon

“That’s game over”: Legal experts say new Jenna Ellis revelation is beyond “devastating” for Trump

Igor Derysh – November 14, 2023

Jenna Ellis John Bazemore-Pool/Getty Images
Jenna Ellis John Bazemore-Pool/Getty Images

Former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis told prosecutors in Fulton County, Ga., that a senior aide to the former president told her he was “not going to leave” the White House even after losing numerous legal challenges.

Ellis in a video of a confidential proffer session with prosecutors obtained by ABC News and The Washington Post said that Trump aide Dan Scavino told her “the boss” would refuse to leave the White House even though she told him that their cause was “essentially over.”

“And he said to me, in a kind of excited tone, ‘Well, we don’t care, and we’re not going to leave,'” Ellis recalled. “And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he said ‘Well, the boss’, meaning President Trump — and everyone understood ‘the boss,’ that’s what we all called him — he said, ‘The boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We are just going to stay in power.'”

Ellis added: “And I said to him, ‘Well, it doesn’t quite work that way, you realize?’ and he said, ‘We don’t care.'”

Ellis also told prosecutors that Scavino’s statement “indicated to me that he was serious and that was in furtherance of something that he had discussed with the boss.

New York University Law Prof. Ryan Goodman, a former special counsel for the Pentagon, told CNN that Ellis’ revelation could be key evidence in the Fulton case as well as Trump’s federal election subversion case in D.C.

“She’s adding something that’s golden evidence for prosecutors both in Georgia and in DC, which is, they don’t have to prove this but if they can show that Trump knew he lost and was still trying to hold on to power, that’s it,” he said. “That’s game over. And that’s exactly what she says is the context of the conversation.”

Gwen Keyes, a former DeKalb County, Ga., district attorney, told MSNBC that Ellis’ testimony may be key to the Fulton case.

“That is a key element of every one of the crimes that is listed in the indictment,” she said. “That being that the defendants knew that they were perpetrating a lie, and so this goes right to the heart of that.”

Former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal, who was also on the segment, pointed out that the conversation between Ellis and Scavino took place after the safe harbor deadline to resolve state disputes, after state electors met to cast their vote and after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s legal challenge.

“You might remember, that Jenna Ellis testified before the Jan. 6 Committee, that at a holiday party, Donald Trump said to Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, ‘I don’t want people to know that we lost. It’s embarrassing, figure it out. We need to figure it out.’ So, all of this together paints a really damaging picture for Donald Trump,” he said.

Fellow former TrumpWorld attorney Sidney Powell told prosecutors in her proffer session that she knew nothing about election law when she sought to challenge Trump’s loss.

“Did I know anything about election law? No. But I understand fraud from having been a prosecutor for 10 years, and knew generally what the fraud suit should be if the evidence showed what I thought it showed,” she told prosecutors.

Though Trump has denied that Powell was ever his attorney, Powell described being in close contact with him and said he frequently called her for updates on the legal efforts, even after his campaign publicly distanced from her.

“He always wanted to know where things were in terms of finding fraud that would change the results of the election,” she said.

Powell also confirmed reporting that Trump was “willing to appoint me a special counsel” to investigate fraud and seize voting machines, though the effort fell through.

“I called Mark Meadows the next morning just to run it to ground, and said, ‘Hey, when can I come pick up my badge and my key?'” Powell said. “He essentially laughed — I mean he said, you know, ‘It’s not going to happen.'”

Powell said she was present when multiple advisers told Trump that he lost and prosecutors questioned why the president followed her advice instead of the others.

“Because I didn’t think he had lost,” Powell replied, later adding: “I saw an avenue pursuant to which, if I was right, he would remain president.”

National security attorney Bradley Moss said the revelations from Ellis and Powell were “devastating.”

“Trump never had any intention of complying with the election results. He was told repeatedly in the presence of a convicted co-defendant that he had lost. He ignored it and conspired with his lawyers to overthrow the election anyway,” he tweeted.

“Devastating is an understatement,” agreed former U.S. Attorney Harry Litman, adding: “The series of revelations from the video interviews of the Defendants to pleaded guilty in Fulton County really serves to validate Willis’s strategy of charging broadly then giving pleas. The testimony is just overwhelming.”

Trump attorney Steve Sadow in a statement to ABC News called the “purported private conversation” described by Ellis “absolutely meaningless.”

“The only salient fact to this nonsense line of inquiry is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021, and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida,” Sadow said. “If this is the type of bogus, ridiculous ‘evidence’ DA Willis intends to rely upon, it is one more reason that this political, travesty of a case must be dismissed.”

Ex-Prosecutor Says A Torn-Up Note Could Be Key To Taking Down Donald Trump

HuffPost

Ex-Prosecutor Says A Torn-Up Note Could Be Key To Taking Down Donald Trump

Lee Moran – November 14, 2023

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann on Monday pointed to a ripped-up note he argued “absolutely” shows Donald Trump’s intent in his failed efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

Trump aide Jonny McEntee wrote the note after then-U.S. Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and then-U.S. Army Chief of Staff James McConville issued a statement in December 2020 saying the military could not determine the outcome of a U.S. election.

McEntee wrote: “[Acting Defense Secretary] Chris Miller spoke to both of them and anticipates no more statements coming out. (If another happens, he will fire them).”

The torn-up note was patched up and appeared as part of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s investigation into the deadly U.S. Capitol riot. It is now included in ABC News journalist Jonathan Karl’s new book “Tired of Winning: Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party.”

MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace asked Weissmann if the note got “right at his [Trump’s] intent of what he wanted them [the military] to do.”

“Absolutely,” replied Weissmann.

The military is “incredibly law-abiding” and “really stands for the rule of law,” he continued. “As much of you think of it as a military organization with a hierarchy, they are also trained that they do not violate the Constitution. And when there’s an invalid order, they know that they cannot follow it because the Constitution comes first.”

Weissman said he was concerned that Trump, who has been indicted over his alleged efforts to thwart democracy and toss out the 2020 result, has now learned “the levers of power,” which he’ll know how to pull immediately should he win a second term.

“I remember when he first started a friend … said this was malevolence matched by incompetence so they weren’t really effective,” he recalled. “The Muslim ban is a perfect example where it took them so many tries to get it ‘right’ so it could pass muster.”

“But I took your book as that it going to be a pale comparison about what will come in a Trump 2.0.,” Weissmann added to Karl.

From a Sergeant, B Battery, 3rd Battalion, 84th Artillery, 7th Army: As a Commander in Chief, Trump was a disgrace.

John Hanno, Tarbabys Blog – Veteran’s Day, November 11, 2023

HuffPost

‘Brilliant’ Joe Biden Ad Torches Donald Trump In Simplest Possible Way

Lee Moran – November 14, 2023

Donald Trump’s derogatory comments about U.S. military service members and veterans were used against him in a powerful new ad released by President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign to mark Veterans Day.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough hailed the spot as “brilliant” because it simply used the former president’s own words “to drive the message home.”

The video highlights Republican 2024 front-runner Trump’s description of fallen soldiers as “suckers” and his criticism of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for being captured during the Vietnam War.

“If you don’t respect our troops, you can’t lead them,” the ad says at the end.