Bluesky

By the time you read this, Donald Trump will have made his big Oval Office speech about the election fraud that doesn’t exist and the SAVE Act that won’t pass. I mean, I’m just guessing. I’m writing this before the speech, and who knows what could happen? Trump could announce that extraterrestrials have made contact but will be forced to remain in Mexico because they’re chartreuse.

Still, the betting money is that he’ll lie his ass off about the upcoming elections in a flailing attempt to force the Senate to pass his bill or to lay the groundwork for sending ICE jackboots to polling places to intimidate voters—or both.

I wish the Democrats were mounting an organized response. I know that the opposition party traditionally responds only after the State of the Union address. But that’s been a tradition only since 1966 (of course, it was the Republicans who started it, when Lyndon Johnson was president). There’s no reason Democrats shouldn’t demand equal time from the television networks and respond to Trump’s lies as soon as he’s done spewing them. Democrats should counter Trump’s narrative, and then go into detail about all the things Trump and the Republican Party are doing to rig the midterms—from gerrymandering, to purging the Election Assistance Commission, to threatening to send ICE thugs to the polls on Election Day.

The Democrats have done it before, in 2019, in response to one of Trump’s unhinged rants about immigration during his first term. I can’t think of a more critical time to do it again. This should be Hakeem Jeffries’s moment. A prime-time speech from the guy who wants to be the leader of the Democratic Party in which he tells us how we’re going to stop Trump from stealing the election is something we need right now.

Of course, mounting a response would require the Democrats to be an organized political party with a self-preservation instinct and an ability to think creatively about how best to combat rising authoritarianism. And, well, “lmao @ Dems,” as the kids say.

I guess next week I’ll just post all 5 billion articles election law lawyer Marc Elias writes about the speech and ask you all to share them in your networks. It’s pretty much all we have left.

The Bad and the Ugly

• Speaking of things I haven’t watched: Todd Blanche sat for his confirmation hearings for attorney general this week. Reports indicate it went as I expected: Blanche believes he has one client, and that client is not the American people. It is Donald Trump.
• Blanche is most recently famous for trying to push through a $1.8 billion slush fund for Trump’s January 6 army. A judge just voided the settlement that led to that money, saying that the terms of the agreement—which involved the government (the DOJ) forcing the government (the IRS) to pay the government money—is “self-dealing.”
• Trump finally had to pay E. Jean Carroll $5 million for defaming her.
• Lawyers for ICE admitted that the agency was lying when it said it didn’t have any documents detailing plans to place ICE personnel at polling stations during the election. In fact, it may have a “trove” of such documents. I am once again asking for this agency to be abolished.
• ICE agents continue to murder people, by the way. This week, they killed a Colombian immigrant who was documented and not subject to any warrant or immigration proceeding… I am once again asking for this agency to be abolished.

Inspired Takes

• I rarely have anything good to say about South Carolina. But The Nation’s John Nichols does. It turns out that South Carolina’s process for replacing the recently departed Lindsey Graham is actually… good. Broken clocks and all that.
• I don’t talk a lot about what New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is doing because, frankly, I’m afraid of being happy. It’s the hope that kills you. But here’s a Nation article about the Mamdani rent freeze, which, if it existed in my day, would have probably meant I’d still be living in the city. And here’s a Nation article about his going toe-to-toe with the odious New York Post. And here’s an article about the New York City police union squealing like stuck pigs because Mamdani is going to make cops’ disciplinary records public. So basically Mamdani is playing the Andy DuFresne to my Red Redding in The Shawshank Redemption.

Worst Argument of the Week

Supreme Court justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett went to Congress this week to ask for money. Specifically, the justices offered testimony in defense of the Supreme Court’s request for an additional $20 million in this year’s budget for extra security for the justices. The justices want more police officers detailed to the Supreme Court.

The justices testified before the House Appropriations subcommittee, which handles intergovernmental budgetary requests. Justice Barrett revealed the details of her personal “swatting” incident—when a SWAT team was sent to her home based on false reports of shooting and domestic disturbance. I found her statements compelling, especially because I know that Barrett has Black children, and I know how dangerous cops are to Black children. Barrett also talked about how unsettling it was for her to have to explain to her kids why Mommy needs to wear a bulletproof vest to work, a conversation I can also relate to.

BUT… Barret did not talk about the way the Supreme Court’s own extremist gun rulings stoke the culture of violence that forces children to take bulletproof backpacks to school. She did not talk about the way the court’s refusal to hold police forces accountable for their violence and brutality makes something like swatting so inherently dangerous for the innocent targets. She did not talk about the way the dehumanization and denigration of others—by the very Trump regime she supports—gives license to the most unstable and violent among us. And she did not talk about the way the misogyny and patriarchy of the white-wing manosphere makes her and every woman in power a target for abuse every time a man gets angry.

No, Barrett did not talk about any of the ways she and her colleagues enable the horrible cultural and political forces that compel the Supreme Court to need more security. She did not reflect on her own role in causing all of this to happen. She just went to Congress to ask for more money. Or, perhaps more accurately, she was sent to Congress to ask for more money by her Republican colleagues on the court who generally regard Congress with contempt. Clarence Thomas is the most senior Republican justice and is apparently happy to go to Congress without telling the public why he’s there, but he was not sent to testify. Neil Gorsuch is happy to pontificate on what Congress must do, and must not do, from the bench, but he was not sent to tell the lawmakers to fund his private security forces.

The most glaring absence was the chief justice, John Roberts. If the Supreme Court is facing dangerous security threats that require additional public resources, it would be appropriate for the chief justice to make that argument himself, in person and in public. Instead, Roberts sent two women to dance for dollars. And this is where I remind you that Roberts has been called to testify in front of Congress but has refused.

Roberts probably knows that asking Congress for money would remind the public that Congress has the power to rein in the Supreme Court. If I were in Congress, I would use that power. I would not give the Supreme Court its own additional security forces until the court submits to real ethics reform. I would tell the justices to let Harlan Crow pay for their bunkers. If they want public dollars, they should have to submit to public accountability and scrutiny.

Unfortunately, asking the Democrats to play hardball with the Supreme Court is like asking an umbrella to hold firm in a hurricane. Steny Hoyer, the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, ran to the cameras after the hearing to say, “Congress must provide sufficient funding to ensure the safety of all judicial personnel.” Other Democrats blamed Trump for “fanning the flames” of violent discord but didn’t name the Supreme Court specifically for its role in giving Trump enough wood and oil to put his country on a funeral pyre. “Orange Man bad, but we need more cops” might as well be the freaking tagline of the Democratic Party.

Maybe I’m just a bad person, but I would absolutely hold the court’s security funding hostage. I would have looked Barrett dead in the eyeballs and said, “My suggestion, Justice Barrett, is that you agree to my ethics reform package, or learn karate.” I wouldn’t give these people an American dollar unless they were forced to be accountable to the American people.

What I Wrote

Lindsey Graham died. I had thoughts.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

Major League Baseball had its All-Star game this week. As I write, the New York Mets are 17 games under .500 and 16 games back in their division, despite carrying the second-highest payroll and… wait, no, I’m not going to talk about the debilitating fandom I have decided to saddle my life with.

Instead, I want to talk about Jordan Walker, the St. Louis Cardinals right fielder, who won the Home Run Derby. Walker happens to be Black. An American-born Black man. And that is actually a shrinking demographic in baseball.

There are fewer African American players in Major League Baseball now than there were in the 1950s. Around 6 percent of active MLB rosters spots are held by African Americans. To put that in context, almost 9 percent of Major League Soccer roster spots are held by American-born Black players.

Meanwhile, over 50 percent of National Football League players are Black (and nearly all of the Black people in the NFL are American-born) and over 60 percent of the National Basketball Association is made up of American-born Black players.

Baseball used to be the sport Black kids played in this country. It is the sport of the civil rights movement. It used to be the “urban” sport: All you need to play is a ball, a stick, and a street. And now it’s not. It’s not even close. It’s getting beat out by freaking soccer.

In his press conference after winning the derby, Walker said he wants to help change that. “I want to be a role model for the Black kids, you know, and I want more Black kids in baseball.… And there are a lot of kids that are athletic enough and mentally strong enough—Black kids that can play this game—and I want to see them do it.”

I want to see them do it, too. Baseball is my favorite sport, and it’s dying out among my people.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go drag my kids away from their iPads and video games and throw softballs at them until they cry from boredom.

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