Category: Immigration

The Lazy Authoritarianism of Donald Trump

Jamelle Bouie – June 21, 2024

A man in profile (Donald Trump) sits in front of a curtain.

Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill last week to visit with House Republicans. According to most reports of the meeting, he rambled.

People present told the nonprofit news outlet NOTUS that the former president “treated his meeting as an opportunity to deliver a behind-closed-doors, stream-of-consciousness rant” in which he “tried to settle scores in the House G.O.P., trashed the city of Milwaukee and took a shot at Nancy Pelosi’s ‘wacko’ daughter.” It was “like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion.”

That same week, Trump met with a group of chief executives at the quarterly meeting of the Business Roundtable. Attendees, CNBC reports, were disappointed. “Trump doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said one executive. Others said that Trump was “remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought and was all over the map.”

There is a good chance that by the end of the year, Trump will be president-elect of the United States. And yet with less than five months left before the election, he is no more prepared for a second term than he was for a first. He may even be less prepared: less capable of organizing his thoughts, less able to speak with any coherence and less willing to do or learn anything that might help him overcome his deficiencies.

Everything that made Trump a bad president the first time around promises to make him an even worse one in a second term.

When I say “bad” here, I don’t mean the content of Trump’s agenda, as objectionable as it is, as much as I do his ability to handle the job of chief executive of the United States. In a political culture as obsessed with drama and celebrity as our own, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that the presidency is an actual job — one of the most difficult in the world.

“Just a partial list of all that must go right in a presidency starts to stretch the limits of human endeavor,” John Dickerson, a reporter and anchor for CBS News, writes in “The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency.”

“A president,” he goes on to say, “needs to pick the right team in a hurry, including a chief of staff who gets the balance of information flow, delegation and gatekeeping just right. The cabinet needs to be filled with leaders who have autonomy but not so much ego that they create political disasters. A president must have exquisite fingertip feel for prioritization, communication and political nuance.”

Trump, in his first term, was not equipped to do the work required of him.

As Jonathan Bernstein, a political scientist, notes in a post for his Substack newsletter, Trump “utterly failed” at the “most important thing for presidents to do in order to succeed: collecting information. Trump didn’t read. He didn’t pay attention during briefings. He didn’t care about policy. He didn’t even bother, as far as anyone can tell, to learn the basic rules of the constitutional system.”

It’s not as if we can expect things to be better in a second term. “Everyone makes mistakes and ideally learns from them,” Matthew Yglesias observes in a recent analysis of Trump’s record as president. “As best I can tell, what Trump learned from his term is that he needs to double down on surrounding himself with craven loyalists who won’t contradict him.”

There is an obvious rejoinder here: How is it possible that Trump is both incompetent and a dangerous authoritarian? How can he undermine American democracy when he struggles to manage his administration?

The answer is that this only seems like a contradiction. In truth, these two sides of the former president are easy to reconcile.

Trump’s authoritarian instincts — his refusal to accept or even learn the rules of the constitutional system — are a huge part of the reason he struggled in the job of president. They helped produce the chaos of his administration. That, in turn, has led him to want to corrode and strip away those rules and strictures that stand in the way of his desire to impose his will directly, both on the government and the country at large.

As Dickerson writes, “Trump is in rebellion against the presidency. Its traditions get in the way of the quick results he wants. He either sidesteps or flattens obstacles or opponents that irritate him or slow him down.”

By no means is Trump the first president or even the first Republican president to abuse the power of the office in an effort to overcome the constitutional limits of the office. We can see something similar with Richard Nixon and Watergate as well as Ronald Reagan and Iran-contra, when the White House circumvented a congressional prohibition on foreign aid to rebel groups in Nicaragua.

But Trump makes no distinction between himself and the office of the presidency. He is the kind of man who might say, “L’état, c’est moi” if he knew of anything other than his own desires. He has the heart of an absolutist.

For Trump to bend to the presidency, he would have to embark on the impossible task of denying himself the satisfaction of imposing his will on others. And so he has tried to break the presidency instead, to transform a constitutional office defined by its limits into an instrument of his personal authority.

A second term would mean even more of the chaos, corruption, disorder and incompetence that defined his first four years in office. Trump and his more ideologically driven allies and advisers would smash through the constitutional system in a reckless drive to satisfy their dreams, desires and delusions.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va., and Washington.

Extreme heat kills hundreds, millions more sweltering worldwide as summer begins

Reuters

Extreme heat kills hundreds, millions more sweltering worldwide as summer begins

Gloria Dickie – June 20, 2024

LONDON (Reuters) -Deadly heatwaves are scorching cities on four continents as the Northern Hemisphere marks the first day of summer, a sign that climate change may again help to fuel record-breaking heat that could surpass last summer as the warmest in 2,000 years.

Record temperatures in recent days are suspected to have caused hundreds, if not thousands, of deaths across Asia and Europe.

In Saudi Arabia, nearly two million Muslim pilgrims are finishing the haj at the Grand Mosque in Mecca this week. But hundreds have died during the journey amid temperatures above 51 degrees Celsius (124 degrees Fahrenheit), according to reports from foreign authorities.

Egyptian medical and security sources told Reuters on Thursday that at least 530 Egyptians had died while participating – up from 307 reported as of yesterday. Another 40 remain missing.

Countries around the Mediterranean have also endured another week of blistering high temperatures that have contributed to forest fires from Portugal to Greece and along the northern coast of Africa in Algeria, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth Observatory.

In Serbia, meteorologists forecast temperatures of around 40 C (104 F) this week as winds from North Africa propelled a hot front across the Balkans. Health authorities declared a red weather alert and advised people not to venture outdoors.

Belgrade’s emergency service said its doctors intervened 109 times overnight to treat people with heart and chronic health conditions.

In neighbouring Montenegro, where health authorities also warned people to stay in the shade until late afternoon, tens of thousands of tourists sought refreshment on the beaches along its Adriatic coast.

Europe this year has been contending with a spate of dead and missing tourists amid dangerous heat. A 55-year-old American was found dead on the Greek island of Mathraki, police said on Monday – the third such tourist death in a week.

A broad swath of the eastern U.S. was also wilting for a fourth consecutive day under a heat dome, a phenomenon that occurs when a strong, high-pressure system traps hot air over a region, preventing cool air from getting in and causing ground temperatures to remain high.

New York City opened emergency cooling centres in libraries, senior centers and other facilities. While the city’s schools were operating normally, a number of districts in the surrounding suburbs sent students home early to avoid the heat.

Meteorological authorities also issued an excessive heat warning for parts of the U.S. state of Arizona, including Phoenix, on Thursday, with temperatures expected to reach 45.5 C (114 F).

In the nearby state of New Mexico, a pair of fast-moving wildfires abetted by the blistering heat have killed two people, burned more than 23,000 acres and destroyed 500 homes, according to authorities. Heavy rains could help temper the blazes, but thunderstorms on Thursday were also causing flash flooding and complicating firefighting efforts.

All told, nearly 100 million Americans were under extreme heat advisories, watches and warnings on Thursday, according to the federal government’s National Integrated Heat Health Information System.

The brutal temperatures should begin easing in New England on Friday, the weather service said, but New York and the mid-Atlantic states will continue to endure near-record heat into the weekend.

COUNTING THE DEAD

India’s summer period lasts from March to May, when monsoons begin slowly sweeping across the country and breaking the heat.

But New Delhi on Wednesday registered its warmest night in at least 55 years, with India’s Safdarjung Observatory reporting a temperature of 35.2 C (95.4 F) at 1 a.m.

Temperatures normally drop at night, but scientists say climate change is causing nighttime temperatures to rise. In many parts of the world, nights are warming faster than days, according to a 2020 study by the University of Exeter.

New Delhi has clocked 38 consecutive days with maximum temperatures at or above 40 C (104 F) since May 14, according to weather department data.

An official at the Indian health ministry said on Wednesday there were more than 40,000 suspected heatstroke cases and at least 110 confirmed deaths between March 1 and June 18, when northwest and eastern India recorded twice the usual number of heatwave days in one of the country’s longest such spells.

Gaining accurate death tolls from heatwaves, however, is difficult. Most health authorities do not attribute deaths to heat, but rather the illnesses exacerbated by high temperatures, such as cardiovascular issues. Authorities therefore undercount heat-related deaths by a significant margin – typically overlooking thousands if not tens of thousands of deaths.

RECORD WARM TEMPERATURES

The heatwaves are occurring against a backdrop of 12 consecutive months that have ranked as the warmest on record in year-on-year comparisons, according to the European Union’s climate change monitoring service.

The World Meteorological Organization says there is an 86% percent chance that one of the next five years will eclipse 2023 to become the warmest on record.

While overall global temperatures have risen by nearly 1.3 C (2.3 F) above pre-industrial levels, climate change is fuelling more extreme temperature peaks – making heatwaves more common, more intense and longer-lasting.

On average globally, a heatwave that would have occurred once in 10 years in the pre-industrial climate will now occur 2.8 times over 10 years, and it will be 1.2 C warmer, according to an international team of scientists with the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group.

Scientists say heatwaves will continue to intensify if the world continues to unleash climate-warming emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

If the world hits 2 C (3.6 F) of global warming, heatwaves would on average occur 5.6 times in 10 years and be 2.6 C (4.7 F) hotter, according to the WWA.

(Reporting by Gloria Dickie in London; additional reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade, Pesha Magid in Riyadh, Shivam Patel in Delhi, Ahmed Mohamed Hassan in Cairo, Ali Withers in Copenhagen and Joseph Ax in New York; editing by Mark Heinrich and Josie Kao)

How the US supreme court could be a key election issue: ‘They’ve grown too powerful’

The Guardian

How the US supreme court could be a key election issue: ‘They’ve grown too powerful’

David Smith in Washington – June 15, 2024

<span>Activists call for the passage of a binding code of ethics for Supreme Court justices in front of the supreme court in Washington DC on 30 October 2023.</span><span>Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE</span>
Activists call for the passage of a binding code of ethics for Supreme Court justices in front of the supreme court in Washington DC on 30 October 2023.Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA-EFE

“Look at me, look at me,” said Martha-Ann Alito. “I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m gonna give it back to you.”

It was a bizarre outburst from the wife of a justice on America’s highest court. Secretly recorded by a liberal activist, Martha-Ann Alito complained about a neighbour’s gay pride flag and expressed a desire to fly a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag in protest.

This, along with audio clips of Justice Samuel Alito himself and a stream of ethics violations, have deepened public concerns that the supreme court is playing by its own rules. The Democratic representative Jamie Raskin has described a “national clamour over this crisis of legitimacy” at the court.

A poll last month for the progressive advocacy organisation Stand Up America suggests that the supreme court will now play a crucial role in voters’ choices in the 2024 election. Nearly three in four voters said the selection and confirmation of justices will be an important consideration for them in voting for both president and senator in November.

Reed Galen, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a pro-democracy group, said: “The idea that these guys act as if they are kings ruling from above, to me, should absolutely be an issue. It was always Republicans who said we hate unelected judges legislating from the bench and we hate judicial activism. That’s all this stuff is.”

Public trust in the court is at an all-time low amid concerns over bias and corruption. Alito has rejected demands that he recuse himself from a case considering presidential immunity after flags similar to those carried by 6 January 2021 rioters flew over his homes in Virginia and New Jersey. Justice Clarence Thomas has ignored calls to step aside because of the role his wife, Ginni, played in supporting efforts to overturn Donald Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020.

Ethical standards have been under scrutiny following revelations that some justices failed to report luxury trips, including on private jets, and property deals. Last week Thomas, who has come under criticism for failing to disclose gifts from the businessman and Republican donor Harlan Crow, revised his 2019 form to acknowledge he accepted “food and lodging” at a Bali hotel and at a California club.

These controversies have been compounded by historic and hugely divisive decisions. The fall of Roe v Wade, ending the nationwide right to abortion after half a century, was seen by many Democrats as a gamechanger in terms of people making a connection between the court and their everyday lives.

Even though debate among members of Congress would lead you to believe that court reform is a polarising issue, it really isn’t

Maggie Jo Buchanan, managing director of Demand Justice

There are further signs of the debate moving beyond the Washington bubble. Last week, the editorial board of the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper argued that, since the court’s own ethics code proved toothless, Congress should enact legislation that holds supreme court justices to higher ethical standards. The paper called for the local senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is chair of the Senate judiciary committee, to hold a hearing on the issue.

Maggie Jo Buchanan, managing director of the pressure group Demand Justice, said: “It’s important to keep in mind that, even though debate among members of Congress would lead you to believe that court reform is a polarising issue, it really isn’t. For years we have seen broad bipartisan support for basic supreme court reforms such as ethics.

“A broad bipartisan consensus exists that they’ve grown too powerful, that they have too much power over laws and regulations. That’s shared among nearly three-fourths of Americans, including 80% of independents, so the demand is there and this isn’t something where it’s Democrats versus Republicans in the sense of real people. The American people want change and want to check the judiciary.”

Congressional Democrats have introduced various bills including one to create an independent ethics office and internal investigations counsel within the supreme court. Broader progressive ideas include expanding the number of seats on the court or limiting the justices to 18-year terms rather than lifetime appointments.

But such efforts have been repeatedly thwarted by Republicans, who over decades impressed on their base the importance of the court, ultimately leading to a 6-3 conservative majority including three Trump appointees.

This week Senate Republicans blocked the ​​Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act, legislation that would require the court to adopt a binding code of conduct for all justices, establish procedures to investigate complaints of judicial misconduct and adopt rules to disclose gifts, travel and income received by them that are at least as rigorous as congressional disclosure rules.

In response, Christina Harvey, executive director of Stand Up America, said its “nearly 2 million members are fired up and ready to continue advocating for supreme court reform – in Congress and at the ballot box”.

But Galen of the Lincoln Project worries that Democrats lack the necessary aggression to capitalise on the issue. “[Senate majority leader Chuck] Schumer and Durbin are not change agents. They consider themselves institutionalists and they continue to call themselves that. They’re in a place where they can’t possibly conceive of something like that. Democrats are just afraid of their own shadow.”

That principle might apply to the US president himself. The 81-year-old, who served in the Senate for 36 years, is reluctant to call out justices by name or call for sweeping reforms of the court, although he is making its decision to end the constitutional right to abortion a centrepiece of his campaign.

Ed Fallone, an associate law professor at Marquette University Law School said: “I don’t know that Joe Biden is the politician to try and benefit from this issue. Biden has always presented himself as an institutionalist and more of a centrist than many segments of the Democratic party.

“There’s a real risk here for Biden because, if he does try to get political advantage from the public’s growing concern about the supreme court, it seems to conflict with his message that we should all respect the court system and the judicial system and the Trump prosecutions and the various legal problems of former Trump advisers. It seems difficult to reconcile telling the public to respect the judicial system with also embracing the idea that the very top of the system is flawed and needs reform.”

Fallone added: “You will see other Democrats seize on this issue and start to push it, in particular those who are are going to try to energise the left side of the base, maybe not necessarily for this election, but maybe anticipating Biden might lose and starting already to look ahead to the following election.”

Other argue that, competing for voter attention with the cost of living, immigration and other issues, the supreme court will ultimately fade into background noise.

Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center think-tank in Washington DC, said: “The middle of the country, the independents and the swing voters do not care about the supreme court, and I don’t think any effort by Democrats or the media bringing up these things about Alito or Thomas is going to register or motivate those people. It motivates partisans. It doesn’t motivate swing voters on either side.”

Alito’s Wife Caught on Tape Spewing Venom at Everyone

The New Republic – Opinion

Alito’s Wife Caught on Tape Spewing Venom at Everyone

Edith Olmsted – June 11, 2024

A secret tape has exposed what Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, really thinks behind closed doors—and the truth isn’t pretty. In the span of just a few minutes, Alito promised revenge on the media, flung around terms like “femnazis,” lauded her German heritage, and went off about Pride flags. It was a mess.

Alito has been in and out of the news in the last month, after her high-ranking husband blamed her for hanging an upside-down American flag outside of their home, a symbol favored by the “Stop the Steal” movement following the 2020 presidential election. She supposedly hung the flag in response to a neighbor’s “F— Trump” sign, which sparked the rather unneighborly spat. Alito also engaged in some light menacing as part of the feud, prompting the neighbor to call the cops on the Alitos. Still, Justice Alito has refused calls to recuse himself from cases relating to the January 6 insurrection.

Journalist Laura Windsor recorded Martha-Ann’s and her husband’s comments during the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner earlier this month. A copy of the tape was published on Monday by Rolling Stone.

Windsor first approached Martha-Ann, posing as a Christian conservative, to express her sympathy over “everything that you’re going through,” referring to the highly publicized flag hanging.

“It’s OK because if they come back to me, I’ll get them,” Alito said cheerfully. “I’m gonna be liberated and I’m gonna get them.”

“What do you mean by ‘they?’” Windsor asked.

“There is a five-year defamation statute of limitations,” Alito said, letting out a laugh.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘they’, like by ‘get them’?” Windsor pressed.

“The media!” Alito said, going on to complain about her coverage in The Washington Post style section from nearly two decades ago.

It appears Alito doesn’t forget about the journalists who’ve gotten on her bad side. In 2016, Alito was reportedly enthusiastic about Trump’s promise to expand U.S. libel laws to make it significantly easier to sue news outlets for their coverage, one GOP operative told Rolling Stone.

While maintaining her cheerful tone, Alito also took aim at any woman who suggested her husband should’ve prevented her from hanging an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, a symbol revived by a Christian nationalist sect and favored by January 6 insurrectionists, at their vacation home.

“The other thing the femnazis believe, that he should control me,” Alito said about her husband. “So, they’ll go to hell. He never controls me.”

When Windsor asked what someone who has the same flag should do, Alito responded simply, “Don’t get angry, get even.”

There was one group that Alito seemed to admire, and it’s not exactly one that people are often openly praising. “Look at me, look at me. I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me. I’m gonna give it back to you. And there will be a way, it doesn’t have to be now, but there will be a way they will know. Don’t worry about it,” she said.

When Windsor tried to ask Alito about the political divide in the United States and her thoughts on the “radical Left,” about which her supposedly nonpolitical husband had plenty to say, Alito cut her off to complain about Pride flags.

“You know what I want? I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month,” she said.

“And he’s like, ‘Oh please, don’t put up a flag.’ I said, ‘I won’t do it because I’m deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense I’m putting it up, and I’m gonna send them a message every day. Maybe every week I’ll be changing the flags. They’ll be all kinds,’” she said, fantasizing about the day when she could finally antagonize her neighbors who support the LGBTQ+ community.

Alito even explained she had invented a flag that says, “Vergogna,” which means “shame” in Italian. “Shame, shame, shame on you,” Alito added darkly.

One can scarcely believe that her husband ruled in favor of allowing businesses to discriminate against people who identify as LGBTQ+.

Councilwoman shot dead outside her home in Mexico

CBS News

Councilwoman shot dead outside her home in Mexico

CBS News – June 10, 2024

A local councilwoman was gunned down Friday as she was leaving her home in the southern state of Guerrero, authorities and local media said, marking the second female politician to be killed in Mexico after Claudia Sheinbaum became the first woman to win the country’s presidency last week.

Esmeralda Garzon, a councilwoman in the municipality of Tixtla, was shot dead as she was leaving her house, local media reported. The Guerrero state attorney general’s office said in a statement that police were sent to the scene to gather evidence and find those responsible for the shooting.

Garzon, who led the equity and gender commission in Tixtla, had been elected under the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the Reuters news agency reported. However, she eventually backed Sheinbaum’s Morena party in the June 2 elections, according to posts on social media. Garzon herself was not running in the elections.

Her murder comes a few days after the mayor of a town in western Mexico and her bodyguard were killed outside of a gym. Yolanda Sanchez Figueroa was killed just hours after Sheinbaum won the presidency.

Most violent elections in modern Mexican history

At least 23 political candidates were killed while campaigning before the elections, according to official statistics, marking the most violent elections in modern Mexican history, according to Reuters.

But some non-governmental organizations have reported an even higher toll, including Data Civica, which counted at least 30 killings of candidates. The toll increases to more than 50 people if relatives and other victims of those attacks are counted, according to Data Civica.

A few days before the elections, one mayoral hopeful’s murder was captured on camera — an assassination that came just one day after another mayoral candidate in the central Mexican state of Morelos was murdered.

The week before that, nine people were killed in two attacks against mayoral candidates in the southern state of Chiapas. The two candidates survived.

Last month, six people, including a minor and mayoral candidate Lucero Lopez, were killed in an ambush after a campaign rally in the municipality of La Concordia, neighboring Villa Corzo.

In April, one mayoral hopeful was shot dead just hours after she began campaigning.

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Not Paying Taxes

By Paul Krugman, Opinion Columnist  – June 10, 2024

An American flag being flown upside-down next to the flag of the Heritage Foundation.
Outside the Heritage Foundation in Washington on May 31.Credit…Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

After Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts, the Heritage Foundation — a right-wing think tank that has, among other things, produced the Project 2025 agenda, a blueprint for policy if Trump wins — flew an upside-down American flag, which has become an emblem for support of MAGA in general and election denial in particular.

This action may have shocked some old-line conservatives who still thought of Heritage as a serious institution, but Heritage is, after all, just a think tank. It’s not as if upside-down flags were being flown by people we expect to defend our constitutional order, like Supreme Court justices.

Oh, wait.

But Heritage’s embrace of what amounts to an attack on democracy is a useful symbol of one of the really troubling developments of this election as it heads into the final stretch. Heritage presents itself as a defender of freedom, but its real mission has always been to produce arguments — frequently based on shoddy research — for low taxes on rich people. And its tacit endorsement of lawlessness illustrates the way many of America’s plutocrats — both in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street — have, after flirting with the crank candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., been rallying around Trump.

Why would billionaires support Trump? It’s not as if they’ve done badly under President Biden. Stock prices — which Trump predicted would crash if he lost in 2020 — have soared. High interest rates, which are a burden on many Americans, are if anything a net positive for wealthy people with money to invest. And I doubt that the superrich are suffering much from higher prices for fast food.

Wealthy Americans, though, are surely betting they’ll pay lower taxes if Trump wins.

Biden and his team have offered fairly explicit guidance about their tax agenda, which would directly raise taxes on high-income Americans and also raise corporate taxes, which would indirectly be mainly a tax on the wealthy. These measures wouldn’t produce taxes at the top remotely comparable to what they were during the Eisenhower years, when the top marginal income tax rate was 91 percent and large estates could face inheritance taxes as high as 77 percent. Still, Biden’s plans, if carried out, would make the rich a bit less rich.

Trump has been far less explicit, but he clearly wants to retain his 2017 tax cut in full, and his allies in Congress are committed not just to tax cuts but to starving the Internal Revenue Service of resources, which would allow more wealthy Americans to evade the taxes they legally owe.

So billionaires aren’t wrong in thinking they’ll pay less in taxes if Trump wins. But why aren’t they more concerned about the bigger picture?

After all, even if all you care about is money, Trump’s agenda should make you very worried. His advisers’ plans to deport millions of immigrants (supposedly only the undocumented, but do you really believe many legal residents wouldn’t get caught up in the dragnets?) would shrink the U.S. labor force and be hugely disruptive. His protectionist proposals (which would be very different from Biden’s targeted measures) could mean an all-out global trade war. If he’s able to make good on them, his attacks on the independence of the Federal Reserve risk much more serious inflation than anything we’ve experienced in recent years.

Beyond all that, Trump will almost certainly try to weaponize the justice system to go after his perceived enemies. Only someone completely ignorant of history would imagine himself safe from that kind of weaponization — even if Trump considers you an ally now, that can change in an instant.

And if you’ve been following Trump’s rantings, you know that his rhetoric is getting less rational and more vindictive by the week. Yet his support among billionaires seems if anything to be consolidating.

So what’s going on? Here’s what I think, although it’s admittedly speculative.

First, America’s oligarchs probably believe that their wealth and influence would protect them from the arbitrary exercise of power. Trump and company might turn corrupt law enforcement and a cowed judiciary against other people, but surely not them! By the time they realized how wrong they were, it would be too late.

As I’ve written before, the superrich can be remarkably obtuse and ignorant of history.

Second, at some level I don’t really think it’s about the money. How much difference does it make to a billionaire’s quality of life if he has to settle for a slightly smaller superyacht? At the top of the pyramid, wealth is largely about status and self-importance; as Tom Wolfe wrote long ago, it’s about “seeing ’em jump.”

And when politicians don’t jump, when they don’t treat the very wealthy with the deference and admiration they consider their due, some of them become enraged. We saw this when many Wall Streeters turned on President Barack Obama — after he helped bail them out in the financial crisis — because they felt insulted by his occasional criticisms.

Biden is hardly a class warrior, but he clearly doesn’t worship the superrich. And all too many of them are turning to Trump out of sheer pettiness.

In Secret Recordings, Alito Endorses Nation of ‘Godliness.’ Roberts Talks of Pluralism.

The two justices were surreptitiously recorded at a Supreme Court gala last week by a woman posing as a Catholic conservative.

Abbie VanSickle, Reporting from Washington – June 10, 2024

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., wearing a black robe.
“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said in a recording when talking about differences between the left and the right in the United States. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a woman posing as a Catholic conservative last week that compromise in America between the left and right might be impossible and then agreed with the view that the nation should return to a place of godliness.

“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito told the woman, Lauren Windsor, at an exclusive gala at the Supreme Court. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Ms. Windsor pressed Justice Alito further. “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument,” she told him, according to the edited recordings of Justice Alito and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., which were posted and distributed widely on social media on Monday. “Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you, I agree with you,” he responded.

The justice’s comments appeared to be in marked contrast to those of Chief Justice Roberts, who was also secretly recorded at the same event but who pushed back against Ms. Windsor’s assertion that the court had an obligation to lead the country on a more “moral path.”

“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” the chief justice said. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”

Ms. Windsor pressed the chief justice about religion, saying, “I believe that the founders were godly, like were Christians, and I think that we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path.”

Chief Justice Roberts quickly answered, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

He added: “I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation. I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”

The chief justice also said he did not think polarization in the country was irreparable, pointing out that the United States had managed crises as severe as the Civil War and the Vietnam War.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., wearing a black robe.
Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in a recording, pushed back against the notion that the United States is a “Christian nation.”Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

When Ms. Windsor pressed him on whether he thought that there was “a role for the court” in “guiding us toward a more moral path,” the chief justice’s answer was immediate.

“No, I think the role for the court is deciding the cases,” he said.

The justices were secretly recorded at an annual black-tie event for the Supreme Court Historical Society, a charity aimed at preserving the court’s history and educating the public about the role of the court. The gala was open only to members, not journalists, and tickets cost $500.

Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but the charity released a statement on Monday that its “policy is to ensure that all attendees, including the justices, are treated with respect.”

The charity added: “We condemn the surreptitious recording of justices at the event, which is inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening.”

Ms. Windsor describes herself as a documentary filmmaker and “advocacy journalist.” She has a reputation for approaching conservatives, including former Vice President Mike Pence, Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia.

She said in an interview on Monday that she felt she had no other way to report on the candid thoughts of the justices.

“We have a court that has refused to submit to any accountability whatsoever — they are shrouded in secrecy,” Ms. Windsor said. “I don’t know how, other than going undercover, I would have been able to get answers to these questions.”

Ms. Windsor would not say how she recorded the encounters, other than that she did not tell the justices she was a journalist or that they were being recorded. She said she felt she needed to record the justices secretly to ensure that her account would be believed.

“I wanted to get them on the record,” she said. “So recording them was the only way to have proof of that encounter. Otherwise, it’s just my word against theirs.”

Some journalism ethics experts questioned her tactics.

Jane Kirtley, a professor of media ethics and law at the University of Minnesota, said that the episode called to mind the tactics used by Project Veritas, a conservative group well known for using covert recordings to embarrass its political opponents.

“I think it’s fair to say that most ethical journalists deplore those kind of techniques,” Ms. Kirtley said. “How do you expect your readers or your viewers to trust you if you’re getting your story through deception?”

Bob Steele, a retired ethics scholar at the Poynter Institute, has written ethics guidelines for journalists on when it is appropriate to use secret recordings or to conceal their identities as reporters.

“I don’t believe that in this particular case the level of misrepresentation of her identity and the surreptitious audio recording is justifiable,” Mr. Steele said.

The secret recording is the latest controversy around the Supreme Court and its justices, particularly Justice Alito, who has faced recent revelations that provocative flags flew outside two of his homes. The flags raised concerns about an appearance of bias in cases currently pending before the court tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In the weeks following the attack, an upside-down American flag, a symbol used by Trump supporters who contested the 2020 election results, flew outside the Alitos’ suburban Virginia home. Last summer, a flag carried by Capitol rioters, known as an “Appeal to Heaven” flag, was flown at their New Jersey vacation home.

Justice Alito has declined to recuse himself from any of the Jan. 6-related cases and has said that it was his wife who flew the flags.

This is also not the first time the historical society has been in the spotlight. The group, which has raised millions of dollars in recent decades, made news after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade when a former anti-abortion leader came forward to say that he had used the historical society to encourage wealthy donors, whom he called “stealth missionaries,” to give money and mingle with the justices.

Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting. 

Why aren’t Americans willing to believe good news about crime?

Yahoo! News 360

Why aren’t Americans willing to believe good news about crime?

Mike Bebernes, Senior Editor – June 3, 2024

Photo illustration: Victoria Ellis for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images (Photo illustration: Victoria Ellis for Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images)
What’s happening

The best data we have available shows that violent crime in the United States has declined significantly over the past couple of years. But ask the average American and they’ll confidently tell you that it’s actually going up.

According to the FBI’s preliminary analysis, crimes like murder, rape and assault fell in 2023 at what could prove to be a record pace, erasing a pandemic-era spike in violent crimes and bringing the national rates near the lowest levels ever recorded. The rate of property crimes like burglary and theft has also declined.

In survey after survey, though, Americans consistently say they believe crime is increasing. In a poll taken late last year, 77% of people said crime is getting worse, and two-thirds said crime is an extremely or very serious problem. The last time Americans were so pessimistic about crime was in the early 1990s, when the violent crime rate was more than double what it is today.

Perception vs. Data
In any given year, most Americans say crime is going up.
The best stats we have suggest it has plummeted in recent decades.

Violent crime rate……..Percentage who said crime is rising

Graph: https://flo.uri.sh/visualisation/18194817/embed?auto=1

This gap between perception and reality has real-world impacts. The campaign to enact police and criminal justice reform gained major momentum in the wake of the nationwide protest movement following George Floyd’s murder in 2020. But it has largely stalled — and in some cases been rolled back — as members of both parties have returned to promoting “tough on crime” policies.

Republicans have also worked to make crime a central issue in the upcoming election, often in connection with immigration based on the false claim that migrants are fueling a national crime wave. They also frequently mischaracterize crime rates in major Democratic-run cities. On Friday, former President Donald Trump, reacting to his own criminal convictions, claimed that crime is “rampant” in New York even though it ranks among the safest cities in the country. Polls suggest that, despite this misleading message, voters trust the GOP to deal with crime much more than Democrats.

Why there’s debate

Part of the disconnect appears to come down to human nature. We tend to put more weight on negative events, whether we experience them personally or simply hear about them, much more than times when everything goes well. Gallup has been polling on perceptions of crime for 25 years, and almost every year a majority of people say it’s going up, even though the actual crime rate has been cut by more than half over that same period.

Experts say there are also plenty of cultural forces that feed our predispositions on crime. Watching the news or using social media, which frequently focuses on out-of-context acts of individual violence, can make crime seem much more prominent than it really is. That’s especially true of conservative media outlets that have a vested interest in promoting the narrative that crime is on the rise.

Politics plays a major role as well. Republicans have been promoting the idea that crime is out of control, especially in blue cities like New York and Chicago, to attack their liberal rivals and draw favor for their “tough on crime” policies for decades. For the most part, though, Democrats have struggled to land on a cohesive narrative to counter these attacks that highlights the progress that has been made without seeming to be dismissive of voters’ concerns.

But some conservative analysts argue that the data is simply wrong and crime has not in fact fallen as much as the numbers would suggest. While the FBI’s figures are the closest thing we have to national crime rates stats, they are far from perfect. They don’t include data from every law enforcement agency in the country and only account for crimes that were in fact reported to police.

Critics say it’s possible that what has really declined is the share of crimes that get reported, either because people distrust the police more recently or because some departments have had their resources cut, not the true crime rate itself. As evidence for this claim, they point to data showing that the share of people who say they’ve been the victim of a crime — whether it was reported or not — did rise in 2022 after falling during the peak of the pandemic.

Perspectives

Good news doesn’t get any attention

“The old adage is that if it bleeds, it leads: Lurid stories attract press coverage. More positive stories, such as the absence of crimes, are less likely to receive attention.” — David A. Graham, The Atlantic

The GOP wants the public to think crime is rampant, and Democrats aren’t eager to counter that message

“Politically, for [Republicans], it would have been helpful if the statistics had been just the opposite. If homicides had gone up, it would have been a useful tool for bashing Democrats in order to take some of the heat off Trump. Democrats, on the other hand, could use the positive stats to bolster policies fostered by the current administration, but they’re being fairly quiet about them because they really want to keep the spotlight on the abortion issue and Trump’s trial.” — EJ Montini, Arizona Republic

Crime hasn’t actually gone down; it has just been reported less

“Americans aren’t mistaken. News reports fail to take into account that many victims aren’t reporting crimes to the police, especially since the pandemic.” — John R. Lott Jr., Wall Street Journal

Social media turns rare incidents into viral moments

“The spread of social media and video technology has made it infinitely easier to film and publicize a viral crime incident such as a large-scale shoplifting spree. There are millions of property crimes occurring each year, but these outlier incidents become the glue people rely on when guesstimating whether crime is up or down. My neighbors never post on NextDoor how many thousands of packages they successfully receive, only video of the one that randomly got swiped.” — Jeff Asher, crime data analyst, via Substack

Conservative media is committed to pushing a false vision of crime

“Even with crime dropping, Fox is still talking about crime as though it’s on the rise. This is often done by cherry-picking, finding a city or a statistic where crime has gone up and then focusing on it. Often, though, it’s simply presented as a given, which its audience — given what it sees on the news — will assume to be the case.” — Philip Bump, Washington Post

Bad data obscures what’s really happening with crime in the U.S.

“I wouldn’t say the FBI is cooking the books, but that the data they are putting out is half-baked. … So it’s not a conspiracy but a rush job, and it’s giving people a false picture. They infer something is true, and then because it’s politically expedient they don’t bother correcting it.” — Sean Kennedy, executive director of the Coalition for Law, Order and Security, to Real Clear Investigations

The chaos of the past few years has left people feeling unsettled and wary of the world around them

“The bottom line is that concern about crime is often a proxy for broader fears about social disorder. Public safety is about more than just the number of robberies and assaults that occur in a given year; it is also about whether people feel safe when they leave their homes. And those vibes have been way off during the past four years.” — Ethan Corey, The Appeal

Mexican officials again criticize volunteer searcher after she finds more bodies

Associated Press

Mexican officials again criticize volunteer searcher after she finds more bodies

Associated Press – June 1, 2024

FILE – Ceci Flores, leader of a “searching mothers” group from northern Mexico, carries a shovel at the site where she said her team found a clandestine crematorium in Tlahuac, on the edge of Mexico City, May 1, 2024. The Mexican volunteer searcher who has been attacked in the past by the government found more bodies in Mexico City in the final days of May 2024. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme, File) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)More

MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican volunteer searcher criticized in the past by the government has found more human remains in Mexico City and officials have attacked her for it — again.

The existence of clandestine body dumping grounds is sensitive for Mexico’s ruling Morena party. Morena, which is running the former Mexico City mayor for president in Sunday’s elections, claims the kind of violence that plagues other parts of the country has been successfully combatted in the capital.

But volunteer searcher Ceci Flores, who has spent years searching for her two missing sons, says that’s because officials haven’t bothered to look for bodies. It’s a common complaint by relatives of missing people in many parts of Mexico, where drug cartels and kidnap gangs use shallow pits to dispose of the bodies of their victims.

On Thursday, Flores posted a video showing what appeared to be human femurs and craniums in the tall dry grass of a hillside on the city’s east side. She suggested there were at least three bodies, and noted there could be more on the hillside.

“We don’t want to disturb them,” Flores said in the video, pointing to a pile of bones with her shovel from a distance of several feet. “We don’t want to go in and disturb them.”

Flores has sparred with the government before, accusing officials of ignoring the plight of Mexico’s more than 100,000 missing people.

In late April, Flores drew the ire of city prosecutors when she claimed she had found charred bones and at least two people’s identification cards in another semi-rural area on the city’s east side. Prosecutors quickly concluded the bones were from dogs, and that the ID cards had been discarded or stolen and their owners were alive.

Soon after, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador played a government-produced video at his daily press briefing, accusing searchers like Flores of morbidity and claimed they were suffering from “a delirium of necrophilia.”

But by Friday, acting Mexico City prosecutor Ulises Lara was forced to acknowledge that Flores had indeed found bones, and that they were apparently human. Lara said police, forensic experts, National Guard officers and soldiers were dispatched to the scene.

That raised the obvious question of why the vast team of official manpower had never been able to find the bodies, while a lone searching mother armed with only a shovel did.

Lara lashed out at Flores without mentioning her by name, claiming “the chain of custody” of the evidence had been broken and the bones had been “handled.”

“This violated the dignity and respect that people searching for the relatives deserve, and some of them have expressed their discontent with this situation,” Lara said, implying it would have been better not to have found them.

In a video posted on social media Saturday, Flores reacted with disbelief.

“Seriously? These remains were unknown. We did the work they are supposed to do,” Flores said. “You (Lara) didn’t even know about them, weren’t aware of them, had not located them.”

Regarding the accusation that other searching relatives were angered by her actions — mass searches of the kind Flores carries out in her native Sonora are not common in Mexico City — Flores shot back, “they should be angry at you for not doing your job.”

López Obrador’s administration has spent far more time and resources looking for people falsely listed as missing — people who may have returned home without advising authorities — than in searching for grave sites that relatives say they desperately need for closure.

Flores is a very accomplished searcher, and like many mothers of disappeared people, she has a deep sense of mission. One of her sons, Alejandro Guadalupe, disappeared in 2015. Her second son, Marco Antonio, was abducted in 2019. Authorities have told her nothing about the fate of either of them.

In her home state of Sonora, authorities confirmed in April they had identified 45 missing people from among 57 sets of remains at a body dumping ground known as “El Choyudo” that was originally discovered by Flores’ group, The Searching Mothers of Sonora.

The “madres buscadoras” (searching mothers) usually aren’t trying to convict anyone of their relatives’ disappearances. They say they just want to find their remains. Many families say not having definite knowledge of a relative’s fate is worse than it would be to know a loved one was dead.

At least seven volunteer searchers have been killed in Mexico since 2021.

Guilty Trump’s press conference was a disaster. Republicans need to replace him – fast.

USA Today – Opinion

Guilty Trump’s press conference was a disaster. Republicans need to replace him – fast.

Rex Huppke – May 31, 2024

Felon Donald Trump arose glassy-eyed from his crypt of self-pity Friday morning to remind Americans he’s not just the first convicted criminal to run for president – he’s also a rambling, incoherent mess.

Speaking of his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cloak a hush-money payment to former adult-film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, Trump babbled at reporters who had gathered inside Trump Tower in Manhattan.

“Crimes crimes, they’s falsifying business records,” he said, looking exhausted and more half-crazed than usual. “That sounds so bad, to me it sounds very bad, You know it’s only a misdemeanor (FACT CHECK: These were felony counts) but to me it sounds so bad, when they say falsifying business records, that’s a bad thing for me, I’ve never had that before. Im falsifying … you know what falsifying business records is, in the first degree, they say falsifying business records, sounds so good, right?”

Uhhh … sure?

Trump’s post-conviction press conference was a babbling mess

The man some actually believe is qualified to be president of the United States also claimed witnesses in his trial were “literally crucified,” said President Joe Biden wants to “stop you from having cars” and said the judge who will sentence him on July 11 is “really a devil.”

Trump is now a convicted felon. Democrats, don’t let voters forget it.

Trump could have testified in his own defense but didn’t, and the excuse he offered was a random assortment of words that went nowhere then veered into an entirely different subject: “I would have loved to have testified, to this day I would’ve liked to have testified, but you would have said something out of whack like it was beautiful sunny day and it was actually raining out, and I very much appreciate the big crowd of people outside, that’s incredible what’s happening, the level of support has been incredible.”

People react moments after news that former President Donald Trump was found guilty in his trial on hush-money payments in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024 in New York City. The former president was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial.
People react moments after news that former President Donald Trump was found guilty in his trial on hush-money payments in Manhattan Criminal Court on May 30, 2024 in New York City. The former president was found guilty on all 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in the first of his criminal cases to go to trial.

Yes, incredible. Or as the Washington Post reported as Trump was speaking: “There are perhaps a few dozen supporters outside but no organized demonstration of any magnitude. It’s mostly gawkers and normal Fifth Avenue traffic in Manhattan.

Trump as ‘a steady hand’? Now THAT’S funny!

Look, I’m no political strategist, but I’m not sure putting the presidential candidate who was just convicted on 34 felony counts in front of cameras to ramble like the drunk at the end of the bar for more than 30 minutes was a fantastic idea. Trump’s disjointed gurgling delivered several “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”-length ads for Democrats to use in the months ahead.

Before Trump spoke, one of his Republican enablers, Rep. Wesley Hunt, let Fox News know what Americans would be hearing from the former president: “We’re going to hear a steady hand. We’re going to hear the voice of a father and a grandfather. We’re going to hear a voice of the future president of this country telling us that it’s going to be okay.”

HAH! Well that sure didn’t happen. We instead heard a dyspeptic chinchilla with anger issues hollering nonsensically.

Presidential polls are useless. Will Trump win? Will Biden? Nobody has a crystal ball.

Republicans really need to consider their options. Trump is a wreck.

Republicans are still adjusting to the new normal of having a convicted felon at the top of their ticket. They’re trying to rally around their twice-impeached, multi-indicted, found-liable-of-sexual-abuse, incapable-of-ever-shutting-up guy. But seeing Trump’s performance Friday and knowing his already erratic rhetoric has worsened with each visit from accountability, maybe it’s time Republican rethink the “presidential candidate” thing.

Off in a quiet corner somewhere sits Nikki Haley, a sane-by-comparison person who was a presidential candidate and would probably be happy to become one again. Perhaps a swap is in order?

Liberals keep saying Biden should be replaced, but what about Trump?

There are people on the left who look at poll numbers and scream, “WE MUST REPLACE JOE BIDEN ON THE PRESIDENTIAL TICKET BECAUSE WE NEED SOMEONE YOUNGER!”

Trump is a convicted felon who does nothing but angrily gripe about grievance after grievance in a way only the most loyal MAGA believers could possibly understand. He’s spiraling like a real-life Gollum from “Lord of the Rings,” obsessed with precious vengeance the way Gollum slimily hungered for the One Ring.

So where are the calls on the right to replace the 77-year-old felon who can’t talk straight with a newer, less legally encumbered version?

Face it, Republicans. The cheese has slid off Trump’s cracker, and it ain’t coming back. Friday was a preview of coming distractions for your party. Either get right or buckle up.