Unfortunately Jay, you’re speaking to the choir. Until mainstream media makes sure that the Trump threat to Democracy is truly real and stops pandering to him or toning down all of his craziness, we may be sunk. A lot of ignorance to the reality of what’s REALLY going on is lost to many…. If Kamala loses, the mainstream media will need to bear most of the blame because her supporters are doing as much as they can do to get her elected.
What I meant was that the people who need to know this information don’t go any further than mainstream media. Your followers, of course, take your information to heart. We follow you because we TRUST you.
Right!?! Wapo has refused to endorse a candidate. First they are believing their own hype that the race is close but also, they openly have said similar things about Trump's proclivities. But by not endorsing a candidate they are sane washing Trump, yet again.
George…totally agree! The Los Angeles Times owner is not allowing the editorial board to endorse Kamala either! I’m about to lose my mind over what the mainstream media is doing/not doing to make sure the people know the danger our democracy is in!
Do they even want subscribers anymore? I get that the owners seem to like Trump, but he's not paying the bills (yet). Liberals I know are cancelling subscriptions left & right. Maybe it's not really having an impact because they are used to losing subscribers and don't expect different? It's also driving me crazy that they don't seem to be journalists in the newspapers anymore. I used to think them dying was a bad thing, but maybe we need a new system.
I am shocked by the cowardice and corruption of the “corporate media”! I already cancelled my WaPo subscription a long time ago (as well as my NYT subscription), or else I’d cancel it now!
I freaking hate the mainstream media bias I kept seeing and I found myself unhappy and filled with anger so I decided to back away. I retreated into my Libby app rather than NPR on my work commute and Substack for my daily reading.
I sadly, in the last day or so, noticed my Substack is now full of anti-Harris pro-Trump ugliness and I’m not familiar enough with the platform to understand how that happened. It used to be all Jay, HCR, Robert Hubbell, Jess Piper, etc.! You know, our people. Have I clicked on the wrong author causing an algorithm to take me in a bad direction?
do you have a source for that? The only word from the WaPo itself was that "two people familiar" named Bezos. Wouldn't surprise me, but it doesn't seem as cut in stone as other reports are making it.
I am reminded of the story (possibly apocryphal, but entirely believable) of Michael Jordan being asked to speak up on matters of voting rights and saying, "Republicans buy shoes too."
Bezos is perfectly aware that MAGAts buy Prime memberships too.
"Publisher" and CEO Will Lewis, who announced the decision in print, said it was because the Post was returning to its roots as an "independent newspaper" that trusted its readers to decide for themselves. This should not be taken seriously for even a moment. (Sadly, the opinion page columnists who stayed responded to this rationale as though it were uttered in good faith. In the words of Chief Justice Roberts: "What chumps!")
Most critics of the decision are citing Professor Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny," and saying that Bezos is "obeying in advance" -- cowardly trying to avoid offending Trump out of fear of Trump coming after his business interests. There may be something to that, and it is certainly craven and cowardly. But that's not the real reason either.
The real apparent reason has been very little reported: yesterday afternoon in Austin, just a couple hours after the Post's decision was announced, Trump met in Austin, Texas with the leaders of Bezos's space venture, Blue Origin. Bezos's financial interest in Blue Origin dwarfs his interest in the Post, and is second only to his interest in Amazon. And it is heavily dependent on the US government--the prospect of government contracts, support and coordination with NASA and DoD, and legal regulation. The timing, the history of Trump's antagonism toward Bezos's businesses based on his resentment of Post coverage, and the history of Trump's behavior in similar situations (think of his demand that Zelensky announce an investigation into Hunter Biden as the condition of receiving already-appropriated military aid to Ukraine) all scream that this was nothing more than a naked quid pro quo.
Bezos sold out the proud history and honor of The Washington Post for a meeting between Blue Origin's leaders and the leader of the 2021 insurrection.
That’s interesting. Certainly from today’s paper the reporters are not sitting quietly. Bunch of anti trump and anti non-endorsement stories and opinions. He hasn't tried, apparently, to put the kibosh on that.
Overall Bezos has been pretty liberal, donating to Democrats, backing same sex marriage, funding a huge PAC to work on getting veterans into office at all levels. I can see his financial interest in hedging his bets, but I think the shame is more Bezos’ than the Post’s. At least the Post is staying neutral. Toadying to trump didn’t get as far as actually endorsing him. I don’t think this is particularly “fatal” to Harris—most Post subscribers have indeed already thought for themselves. This may well be less so for the LA times. Truly "obeying in advance" would have been actually endorsing trump. THAT would be momentous.
This is not to say I'm enamored of MSM's sanewashing, though the Post hasn't been as egregious as the NYT. I've kept both my subscriptions, since both papers have had really good articles on the Middle East and the actual ORIGINS of the disputes and on other things that matter besides the election. There IS a world out there we'll have to deal with come 11/5, come what may.
Oh, this won’t leave a mark on Harris. No worry there. And Bezos may be a nice liberal guy in real life (though it’s a little hard for me to see while thinking about how Amazon workers have it and knowing his approach to workers’ right to organize). And this is definitely not the Post’s fault, it’s Bezos’s. BUT — I think this is, and probably should be, fatal to the Post as a serious newspaper. The paper of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Insurrection now has as much credibility as a Sinclair Media affiliate. That’s what Bezos casually tossed away to get his Blue Origin meeting with Hair Furor. He and the Post will carry that shame.
Yup. Sadly, people, who already don't care that Trump is a fascist dictator wannabe, will continue not to care. The world he keeps promising them is exactly what they want.
I’m not sure they truly understand that! The media has been doing a great job sane washing his responses or editing them out completely. Unfortunately, many people don’t check the sources they’re using or go along with whatever the channel they’re watching says. Frightening to say the least.
If Kamala does lose, the Mainstream Media will have Slit Their Own Throats! A Trump Presidency will result in an Authoritarian Government, and there be ONE News Agency patterned after Putin's TASS!
I wish that there had been a deeper dive taken into reconstruction during history classes instead of making it seem like everything was all hunkydory, except for those dang old carpet baggers. But there's so much that they either bypass, skim over, whitewash, or just flat out refuse to touch on the excuse of "there's not enough time in the school year to cover it".
Read Heather Cox Richardson (perhaps you already do). She is a brilliant historian at Boston College. She has a Substack and has written many books, and weaves history to present day issues.
I couldn't agree more. This period is her specialty, and her Letters to An American often go back to that era with a view towards modern times. She is also on Facebook and Twitter (where it is very interesting to note her re-tweets).
Me, too!! She is amazing & my link to sanity. The way she compiles the most important news of the day, and links it to historical precedents is awesome. Her Tuesday live chats on FB are great, too!!
Even in high school, we knew that "there's not enough time to cover it" meant "we don't want to talk about that because you damned kids will ask uncomfortable questions." Our class didn't talk about Vietnam, either, even though many of us had parents who'd fought there. Also, do you notice that somehow we all came away from reading about Reconstruction with a bad view of the North? You know, the side that won? The North won the war and the South won the Story of what came afterward.
Oh, yeah, definitely! They badmouthed the North, talking about the opportunist carpet baggers, and and yellow journalism somehow got a prominent mention, too, along with muckrakers.
I hope people are still reading Jim Loewen’s wonderful analysis of history textbooks, Lies My Teacher Told Me. The Southern tilt in the history we learned is remarkable.
And no one ever talks about Hayes. If you go into a bookstore, used or new, you will find presidential biographies of Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton, Washington, etc. up the wazoo, but not Hayes. He needs some PR so people will understand how he and Andrew Johnson wrecked the country.
An only partially related comment: when Trump said he wished he had Hitler's generals, he was, once again, showing his ignorance. One of his generals was Claus von Stauffenberg, who today is venerated as a national hero in Germany. He tried to assassinate Hitler to prevent more atrocities (the attempt failed, and von Stauffenberg was executed. That's one of the reasons the death penalty in Germany is unconstitutional today).
See my reply somewhere above about the positions of the generals who have called Trump a fascist and the very real possibility of being recommissioned in order to be courts martialed.
I did look into this briefly. The generals in the Wehrmacht were not all Nazis in the sense of belonging to the party, but the senior officers all went along with Hitler. One military man who didn't was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who ran the Abwher (intelligence). He resisted: and was executed for his pains--just a couple of weeks before Hitler killed himself in April 1945
There is a very real possibility that if Trump wins, Australia will shut down a lot of our diplomatic and trade ties with you guys. We don't want it to happen but the man is so openly dangerous and Project 2025 is so opposite to everything we value as a country...
It seems to me that the posse commitatus act was essentially removed by the Supreme Court when they granted the President immunity. Commanding the military is clearly an official duty, and one effectively only available to the President. So the fine-or-imprisonment clause no longer has any effect.
The only bright side is that a future, saner, SCOTUS could use this contradiction to reverse the immunity decision.
While the scouts decision is short sighted, acts within official duties would fall under impeachment because they could be considered abuse of power or "high crimes". As a nation we either need a motivated Congress to imprach and convict and/or a scotus that actually recognizes that the impeachment clause allows for criminal conviction otherwise.
Excellent writeup, Jay, on one of the most dangerous and open-ended laws on the fed books, the Insurrection Act...and the worst part about this hideous law is "tRump's judges" sitting on benches across the country, at all levels up to and including SCOTUS, who won't be of a mind to curtail any abuse of the Act.
Also potentially troublesome is the Espionage Act, used by Bush, particularly by Obama, and of course tRump, as a weapon to silence the media's reporting of events within an Administration obtained from "sources" or "whistleblowers". CJR has an excellent summary of the issues:
Finally, there is the Enemy Alien Act of 1798 - yes, 1798, and yet not repealed! - which could be invoked to launch the tRump/Stephen Miller "immigrant roundup and expulsion" fever dream long promised to the MAGA faithful.
And all of the above is but a starting point for a tRump Reich, cheered on by a bare majority of voters, should the coming election break his way...oy vey!
If I'm understanding the legal points, Joe Biden could use these laws plus the Supreme Court Decision if he deemed it justified before Trump could take the oath of office. If that's wrong, please correct me.
I have been thinking the same thing! Also, if Trump actually wins, do we think these military generals who believe he is a danger to our country going to sit quietly by and let Trump round them and their families up and destroy the country?
I was wondering if Madame VP is voted in and the MAGA asshats go nuts if Biden could call for Marshall and essentially lock us down as a way to calm things down for a bit. Get her in the release the reins to her.
Sure - he COULD do a lot of things along those lines. However, he is not a criminally insane person, and unlike The Convict, he respects the laws and traditions of our democracy.
It's no use fantasizing about him doing the same kinda stuff The Convict would do just because he can. He's just not built like that.
If you knew that you were relinquishing power to someone about to dissolve the Constitution, you'd not be criminally insane to prevent that using the legal tools at your disposal. Indeed, you'd be doing your sworn duty to defend the Constitution. And, as SCOTUS said, these would be Official Acts, not prosecutable. (Of course, everything would come down to the details, so what I've said might not be plausible given a certain set of facts.)
I hope this is just my internal dystopian author coming to the fore, but there's a definite part of me that thinks Trump and his backers want to annex Mexico, a la Russia's control over the smaller Soviet republics. Great place to build solar farms and data centers and EV manufacturing plants, with what would amount to legalized slave labor.
We all know the inspriational phrase, "Why not us? Why not now?" Usually it's used as a self-empowerment mantra to overcome self-doubt and fear of taking a risk.
People who backed Hitler didn't expect to be taken from their regular lives to murder and suppress other country's populations. It probably seemed unthinkable, to the point they refused to even consider that Hitler could be THAT bad. After all, they liked his economic policies, and their bad situation was the fault of immigrants and minorities.
With that in mind, looking at an unfettered Trump in command of the US military, I wonder... why not us? Why not now?
I don't think that's going to happen, because then he'd end up with all those people he deemed undesirable as US citizens.
That said, historically it wouldn't be the first time the US annexed parts of Mexico. Texas, California, and points between were annexed from Mexico. And the Gadsden Purchase (which ended up buying just a fairly small strip of land) was originally envisioned of including large parts of Mexico, down to Mazatlan.
If you do want to speculate about annexation, I would think that today Cuba is a more likely candidate. It would give Republicans a whole new state with likely R-leaning voters, without even having to wait the decades it would take for immigration and naturalization.
But neither Cuba nor Mexico are likely to happen. Thankfully.
Why make Mexico a state (or even a collection of new states)? I don't see that as the potential goal.
For the record, I also don't think this is going to happen. My point was less that this is what is to come, and more about how we as a country continue to say "Trump can't be nearly as bad as he seems. Because he seems beyond human capability of awfulness." Yet he IS that awful, just as Hitler was that awful.
But left unopposed and given full power? I could totally see him doing that, and worse. And I think there are even more sinister, intelligent, calculating minds behind him in the shadows propping him up. So... will it happen? Probably not. Can it happen? The pieces are slowly but systematically being put in place.
Chew on this for a bit. People talk about the 25th Amendment. But what if Vance is actively trying to hasten Trump's demise or incapacity? I wouldn't put anything past that little weasel.
The end of the Posse Comitatus Act... "shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Does he even need to invoke the insurrection act to violate Comitatus? Isn't he immune from prosecution now? Can't he simply disregard it as long as he's using the authority vested in him as Prez to march troops into streets?
After Kamala wins, and win she will, she will need to address SCOTUS's horrific immunity ruling somehow. Perhaps she can find a benign way to trigger a case. Something that causes Republicans great pain but doesn't harm the country. Unless she can somehow lead an effort for a Constitutional Amendment. But getting that kind of bipartisan buy in across all the states necessary to ratify such a thing seems like a fantasy.
Repairing and reforming the Supreme Court will be necessary. And Manchin and Sinema, the two filibuster fabulists, will be gone finally. The 60 votes filibuster cudgel can begin to be reformed. And yeah, laws like these will need to begin to be addressed. Sigh. None of this happened in one day and none of this will be repaired in one day.
We're not gonna keep Manchin's seat. So we are going to need to keep some shaky seats (Ohio and Montana come to mind) and flip a couple more to get there. It is entirely possible we get Kamala as POTUS, and a Republican Congress. Yes, there are Republicans gearing up to vote for her, but does anyone really think they're going to vote Dem all the way down?
There's a No Kings Act in the Senate now. I think Schumer introduced it. With this Congress it won't be passed but if we're lucky, it could happen next time.
During your live stream this week, you both said that if Trump wins, it won't be the end of the US, but I don't think it is overly pessimistic to say that it will be, at least for my lifetime. He doesn't need laws; he can order anyone to do anything, and he is immune. In his first, uneducated attempt at takeover, he did irreparable damage, esp. through radicalization of the courts. The damage they have done and continue to do can't be repaired in a single lifetime. Now he goes back in after having learned the pitfalls, and with complete immunity to do what he wants. Those who have dranketh of the kool-aid will believe him when he says the radical left made me do it, just like all the enablers in Nazi Germany. And the rest of us will either go along or be imprisoned or worse. And where does that end and how can it be repaired? Where the US has always led the protection of the world, the world will need protection from us. And rather than fighting against the evil dictators, we'll belong to the club. Worst of all, people aren't figuring it out. No matter what he does, he and Fox blame it on radical liberals, and their following grows. Even if they fail this time, this battle will continue, maybe not with Trump, but it certainly doesn't go away if he loses.
My question is: if by some miracle the Democrats win a majority of the Senate and House seats, is it correct that they're installed on January 1st? And, if so, and if trump won the presidency, could the Senate and House revise the Insurrection Act (and the others) in the 20 days before trump is installed so that he can’t use it/them? They would have a month and a half to get something ready to present on day one (or day two). Would that work? Heck, they could even start planning now, knowing what he’s thinking of doing. And then if Kamala wins, they can still revise the Act(s) without the urgency. What do you think? It would be a giant effort but well worth it in the long run. I hope you won’t answer “It’ll never happen” like my ex used to say when I asked a stupid (to him) football question. 😁
Can we please not show any more photos of "Agent Orange" (Spike Lee's reference to the obese, demented convicted felon when Spike spoke at the fabulous Atlanta Rally last night). Those photos give many of us nausea and stress. Thank you. I value your work, Jay.
Lafayette Square was foretelling, he already used the military to attack US citizens, peaceful protesters were attacked at his behest so it should come at no surprise that he'd do it again given the chance. Please don't give him the chance, Vote 💙.
Thank you, Jay -- this is an excellent summary of both the laws as they stand now, and the danger we are facing. And we must be vigilant -- it is not just Trump. He may very well lose, but the fascist forces that are aligned with him and support him (not just in the US, but internationally) aren't going anywhere if he loses and fails to overthrow the legitimately elected government. Fascism in America, and in Europe, is on the rise. I agree with you -- we must be clear-eyed about the danger and what we may be called upon to stand up for.
Commander William Adama (Battlestar Galactica) : "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
Unfortunately Jay, you’re speaking to the choir. Until mainstream media makes sure that the Trump threat to Democracy is truly real and stops pandering to him or toning down all of his craziness, we may be sunk. A lot of ignorance to the reality of what’s REALLY going on is lost to many…. If Kamala loses, the mainstream media will need to bear most of the blame because her supporters are doing as much as they can do to get her elected.
I hope I’m not just preaching but actually providing useful information about how the laws interact, what they say and how they can be reformed!
What I meant was that the people who need to know this information don’t go any further than mainstream media. Your followers, of course, take your information to heart. We follow you because we TRUST you.
Right!?! Wapo has refused to endorse a candidate. First they are believing their own hype that the race is close but also, they openly have said similar things about Trump's proclivities. But by not endorsing a candidate they are sane washing Trump, yet again.
Our media has failed us!!!
George…totally agree! The Los Angeles Times owner is not allowing the editorial board to endorse Kamala either! I’m about to lose my mind over what the mainstream media is doing/not doing to make sure the people know the danger our democracy is in!
Do they even want subscribers anymore? I get that the owners seem to like Trump, but he's not paying the bills (yet). Liberals I know are cancelling subscriptions left & right. Maybe it's not really having an impact because they are used to losing subscribers and don't expect different? It's also driving me crazy that they don't seem to be journalists in the newspapers anymore. I used to think them dying was a bad thing, but maybe we need a new system.
So much for "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
And the darkness, now, is the corporate media.
Democracy is still fighting. While it does, The Washington Post is on its back--licking the insurrection leader's boot.
It’s not a motto, but a playbook. 😡
I am shocked by the cowardice and corruption of the “corporate media”! I already cancelled my WaPo subscription a long time ago (as well as my NYT subscription), or else I’d cancel it now!
I freaking hate the mainstream media bias I kept seeing and I found myself unhappy and filled with anger so I decided to back away. I retreated into my Libby app rather than NPR on my work commute and Substack for my daily reading.
I sadly, in the last day or so, noticed my Substack is now full of anti-Harris pro-Trump ugliness and I’m not familiar enough with the platform to understand how that happened. It used to be all Jay, HCR, Robert Hubbell, Jess Piper, etc.! You know, our people. Have I clicked on the wrong author causing an algorithm to take me in a bad direction?
You can block the trolls. Click on the dots in the top right and then block.
Do we know any reason? Was it the board itself, or Bezos pulling an Owner Veto?
Keep in mind that WaPo also has news stories highly critical of trump. See eg https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/25/trump-words-speeches-campaign-president/
and
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/21/trumps-recent-four-pinocchio-flights-fancy/
It was a Bezos decision from the top, and Wm Lewis, the publisher, was tasked with carrying the can.
do you have a source for that? The only word from the WaPo itself was that "two people familiar" named Bezos. Wouldn't surprise me, but it doesn't seem as cut in stone as other reports are making it.
Check WaPo, article written by two WaPo staffers naming Bezos as "the decider".
I am reminded of the story (possibly apocryphal, but entirely believable) of Michael Jordan being asked to speak up on matters of voting rights and saying, "Republicans buy shoes too."
Bezos is perfectly aware that MAGAts buy Prime memberships too.
"Publisher" and CEO Will Lewis, who announced the decision in print, said it was because the Post was returning to its roots as an "independent newspaper" that trusted its readers to decide for themselves. This should not be taken seriously for even a moment. (Sadly, the opinion page columnists who stayed responded to this rationale as though it were uttered in good faith. In the words of Chief Justice Roberts: "What chumps!")
Most critics of the decision are citing Professor Timothy Snyder, author of "On Tyranny," and saying that Bezos is "obeying in advance" -- cowardly trying to avoid offending Trump out of fear of Trump coming after his business interests. There may be something to that, and it is certainly craven and cowardly. But that's not the real reason either.
The real apparent reason has been very little reported: yesterday afternoon in Austin, just a couple hours after the Post's decision was announced, Trump met in Austin, Texas with the leaders of Bezos's space venture, Blue Origin. Bezos's financial interest in Blue Origin dwarfs his interest in the Post, and is second only to his interest in Amazon. And it is heavily dependent on the US government--the prospect of government contracts, support and coordination with NASA and DoD, and legal regulation. The timing, the history of Trump's antagonism toward Bezos's businesses based on his resentment of Post coverage, and the history of Trump's behavior in similar situations (think of his demand that Zelensky announce an investigation into Hunter Biden as the condition of receiving already-appropriated military aid to Ukraine) all scream that this was nothing more than a naked quid pro quo.
Bezos sold out the proud history and honor of The Washington Post for a meeting between Blue Origin's leaders and the leader of the 2021 insurrection.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4954591-trump-meets-blue-origin-leaders-bezos/
That’s interesting. Certainly from today’s paper the reporters are not sitting quietly. Bunch of anti trump and anti non-endorsement stories and opinions. He hasn't tried, apparently, to put the kibosh on that.
Overall Bezos has been pretty liberal, donating to Democrats, backing same sex marriage, funding a huge PAC to work on getting veterans into office at all levels. I can see his financial interest in hedging his bets, but I think the shame is more Bezos’ than the Post’s. At least the Post is staying neutral. Toadying to trump didn’t get as far as actually endorsing him. I don’t think this is particularly “fatal” to Harris—most Post subscribers have indeed already thought for themselves. This may well be less so for the LA times. Truly "obeying in advance" would have been actually endorsing trump. THAT would be momentous.
This is not to say I'm enamored of MSM's sanewashing, though the Post hasn't been as egregious as the NYT. I've kept both my subscriptions, since both papers have had really good articles on the Middle East and the actual ORIGINS of the disputes and on other things that matter besides the election. There IS a world out there we'll have to deal with come 11/5, come what may.
Oh, this won’t leave a mark on Harris. No worry there. And Bezos may be a nice liberal guy in real life (though it’s a little hard for me to see while thinking about how Amazon workers have it and knowing his approach to workers’ right to organize). And this is definitely not the Post’s fault, it’s Bezos’s. BUT — I think this is, and probably should be, fatal to the Post as a serious newspaper. The paper of the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the Insurrection now has as much credibility as a Sinclair Media affiliate. That’s what Bezos casually tossed away to get his Blue Origin meeting with Hair Furor. He and the Post will carry that shame.
Yup. Sadly, people, who already don't care that Trump is a fascist dictator wannabe, will continue not to care. The world he keeps promising them is exactly what they want.
I’m not sure they truly understand that! The media has been doing a great job sane washing his responses or editing them out completely. Unfortunately, many people don’t check the sources they’re using or go along with whatever the channel they’re watching says. Frightening to say the least.
The World Trump is promising his Supporters will result in a Rude Awakening!
Until it affects them negatively. Then they freak out.
If Kamala does lose, the Mainstream Media will have Slit Their Own Throats! A Trump Presidency will result in an Authoritarian Government, and there be ONE News Agency patterned after Putin's TASS!
There is no MSM any more. The word for it now is "corporate media".
I wish that there had been a deeper dive taken into reconstruction during history classes instead of making it seem like everything was all hunkydory, except for those dang old carpet baggers. But there's so much that they either bypass, skim over, whitewash, or just flat out refuse to touch on the excuse of "there's not enough time in the school year to cover it".
Read Heather Cox Richardson (perhaps you already do). She is a brilliant historian at Boston College. She has a Substack and has written many books, and weaves history to present day issues.
I couldn't agree more. This period is her specialty, and her Letters to An American often go back to that era with a view towards modern times. She is also on Facebook and Twitter (where it is very interesting to note her re-tweets).
Me, too!! She is amazing & my link to sanity. The way she compiles the most important news of the day, and links it to historical precedents is awesome. Her Tuesday live chats on FB are great, too!!
Much like Rachel Maddow used to do in such a brilliant fashion. And when we say "weave", we MEAN "weave"!
I will have to check her out. Thanks!
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
Funny but also sad on how history seems to repeat itself.
Even in high school, we knew that "there's not enough time to cover it" meant "we don't want to talk about that because you damned kids will ask uncomfortable questions." Our class didn't talk about Vietnam, either, even though many of us had parents who'd fought there. Also, do you notice that somehow we all came away from reading about Reconstruction with a bad view of the North? You know, the side that won? The North won the war and the South won the Story of what came afterward.
Oh, yeah, definitely! They badmouthed the North, talking about the opportunist carpet baggers, and and yellow journalism somehow got a prominent mention, too, along with muckrakers.
I hope people are still reading Jim Loewen’s wonderful analysis of history textbooks, Lies My Teacher Told Me. The Southern tilt in the history we learned is remarkable.
And no one ever talks about Hayes. If you go into a bookstore, used or new, you will find presidential biographies of Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Clinton, Washington, etc. up the wazoo, but not Hayes. He needs some PR so people will understand how he and Andrew Johnson wrecked the country.
I wish our Elected Representatives on Both sides of the Aisle would have Amended Our Constitution to prevent the SHITSHOW we are now experiencing!
Hell would have to freeze over first.
An only partially related comment: when Trump said he wished he had Hitler's generals, he was, once again, showing his ignorance. One of his generals was Claus von Stauffenberg, who today is venerated as a national hero in Germany. He tried to assassinate Hitler to prevent more atrocities (the attempt failed, and von Stauffenberg was executed. That's one of the reasons the death penalty in Germany is unconstitutional today).
See my reply somewhere above about the positions of the generals who have called Trump a fascist and the very real possibility of being recommissioned in order to be courts martialed.
I did look into this briefly. The generals in the Wehrmacht were not all Nazis in the sense of belonging to the party, but the senior officers all went along with Hitler. One military man who didn't was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who ran the Abwher (intelligence). He resisted: and was executed for his pains--just a couple of weeks before Hitler killed himself in April 1945
There is a very real possibility that if Trump wins, Australia will shut down a lot of our diplomatic and trade ties with you guys. We don't want it to happen but the man is so openly dangerous and Project 2025 is so opposite to everything we value as a country...
Tristan…I can see many countries backing off because of his ties to Russia, China and North Korea.
Sorry…autocorrect🙄…TRISTRAM
If Trump does win, the Nation's of the World should prepare for a Mass Migration of U.S. Citizen's!
I am saddened to hear it. I assume also that Australia wouldn’t take American refugees.
What do you think the effects of that would be?
It seems to me that the posse commitatus act was essentially removed by the Supreme Court when they granted the President immunity. Commanding the military is clearly an official duty, and one effectively only available to the President. So the fine-or-imprisonment clause no longer has any effect.
The only bright side is that a future, saner, SCOTUS could use this contradiction to reverse the immunity decision.
This is an interesting point.
While the scouts decision is short sighted, acts within official duties would fall under impeachment because they could be considered abuse of power or "high crimes". As a nation we either need a motivated Congress to imprach and convict and/or a scotus that actually recognizes that the impeachment clause allows for criminal conviction otherwise.
But Vance would have to be impeached as well or we'd end up with him.
Agreed. The only punishment now available for "official" Presidential misbehavior is impeachment. And we know that is never going to happen...
Excellent writeup, Jay, on one of the most dangerous and open-ended laws on the fed books, the Insurrection Act...and the worst part about this hideous law is "tRump's judges" sitting on benches across the country, at all levels up to and including SCOTUS, who won't be of a mind to curtail any abuse of the Act.
Also potentially troublesome is the Espionage Act, used by Bush, particularly by Obama, and of course tRump, as a weapon to silence the media's reporting of events within an Administration obtained from "sources" or "whistleblowers". CJR has an excellent summary of the issues:
https://www.cjr.org/covering_the_election/new-normal-paoletta-trump-espionage-act-project-2025-prosecute-enemies.php?mc_cid=9bdef2123e
Finally, there is the Enemy Alien Act of 1798 - yes, 1798, and yet not repealed! - which could be invoked to launch the tRump/Stephen Miller "immigrant roundup and expulsion" fever dream long promised to the MAGA faithful.
And all of the above is but a starting point for a tRump Reich, cheered on by a bare majority of voters, should the coming election break his way...oy vey!
If I'm understanding the legal points, Joe Biden could use these laws plus the Supreme Court Decision if he deemed it justified before Trump could take the oath of office. If that's wrong, please correct me.
I have been thinking the same thing! Also, if Trump actually wins, do we think these military generals who believe he is a danger to our country going to sit quietly by and let Trump round them and their families up and destroy the country?
If he writes the order will they have a choice? That's the worry for me
I was wondering if Madame VP is voted in and the MAGA asshats go nuts if Biden could call for Marshall and essentially lock us down as a way to calm things down for a bit. Get her in the release the reins to her.
They can choose not to obey it. I won't speculate on what comes after that.
Sure - he COULD do a lot of things along those lines. However, he is not a criminally insane person, and unlike The Convict, he respects the laws and traditions of our democracy.
It's no use fantasizing about him doing the same kinda stuff The Convict would do just because he can. He's just not built like that.
If you knew that you were relinquishing power to someone about to dissolve the Constitution, you'd not be criminally insane to prevent that using the legal tools at your disposal. Indeed, you'd be doing your sworn duty to defend the Constitution. And, as SCOTUS said, these would be Official Acts, not prosecutable. (Of course, everything would come down to the details, so what I've said might not be plausible given a certain set of facts.)
I hope this is just my internal dystopian author coming to the fore, but there's a definite part of me that thinks Trump and his backers want to annex Mexico, a la Russia's control over the smaller Soviet republics. Great place to build solar farms and data centers and EV manufacturing plants, with what would amount to legalized slave labor.
We all know the inspriational phrase, "Why not us? Why not now?" Usually it's used as a self-empowerment mantra to overcome self-doubt and fear of taking a risk.
People who backed Hitler didn't expect to be taken from their regular lives to murder and suppress other country's populations. It probably seemed unthinkable, to the point they refused to even consider that Hitler could be THAT bad. After all, they liked his economic policies, and their bad situation was the fault of immigrants and minorities.
With that in mind, looking at an unfettered Trump in command of the US military, I wonder... why not us? Why not now?
I don't think that's going to happen, because then he'd end up with all those people he deemed undesirable as US citizens.
That said, historically it wouldn't be the first time the US annexed parts of Mexico. Texas, California, and points between were annexed from Mexico. And the Gadsden Purchase (which ended up buying just a fairly small strip of land) was originally envisioned of including large parts of Mexico, down to Mazatlan.
If you do want to speculate about annexation, I would think that today Cuba is a more likely candidate. It would give Republicans a whole new state with likely R-leaning voters, without even having to wait the decades it would take for immigration and naturalization.
But neither Cuba nor Mexico are likely to happen. Thankfully.
Why make Mexico a state (or even a collection of new states)? I don't see that as the potential goal.
For the record, I also don't think this is going to happen. My point was less that this is what is to come, and more about how we as a country continue to say "Trump can't be nearly as bad as he seems. Because he seems beyond human capability of awfulness." Yet he IS that awful, just as Hitler was that awful.
But left unopposed and given full power? I could totally see him doing that, and worse. And I think there are even more sinister, intelligent, calculating minds behind him in the shadows propping him up. So... will it happen? Probably not. Can it happen? The pieces are slowly but systematically being put in place.
Chew on this for a bit. People talk about the 25th Amendment. But what if Vance is actively trying to hasten Trump's demise or incapacity? I wouldn't put anything past that little weasel.
Well gosh, since Sarah Palin can see Russia from her backyard in Alaska, why not go for that too? (Sorry. Couldn't resist. They're just so stupid.)
Oh yes, they do want that. He's been floating the idea of war with Mexico. Crazy!!
I missed any statements Trump has said directly to that point. Hopefully we will never find out if he means it. 😳
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/us/politics/trump-mexico-cartels-republican.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
The end of the Posse Comitatus Act... "shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
Does he even need to invoke the insurrection act to violate Comitatus? Isn't he immune from prosecution now? Can't he simply disregard it as long as he's using the authority vested in him as Prez to march troops into streets?
After Kamala wins, and win she will, she will need to address SCOTUS's horrific immunity ruling somehow. Perhaps she can find a benign way to trigger a case. Something that causes Republicans great pain but doesn't harm the country. Unless she can somehow lead an effort for a Constitutional Amendment. But getting that kind of bipartisan buy in across all the states necessary to ratify such a thing seems like a fantasy.
Repairing and reforming the Supreme Court will be necessary. And Manchin and Sinema, the two filibuster fabulists, will be gone finally. The 60 votes filibuster cudgel can begin to be reformed. And yeah, laws like these will need to begin to be addressed. Sigh. None of this happened in one day and none of this will be repaired in one day.
We're not gonna keep Manchin's seat. So we are going to need to keep some shaky seats (Ohio and Montana come to mind) and flip a couple more to get there. It is entirely possible we get Kamala as POTUS, and a Republican Congress. Yes, there are Republicans gearing up to vote for her, but does anyone really think they're going to vote Dem all the way down?
There's a No Kings Act in the Senate now. I think Schumer introduced it. With this Congress it won't be passed but if we're lucky, it could happen next time.
During your live stream this week, you both said that if Trump wins, it won't be the end of the US, but I don't think it is overly pessimistic to say that it will be, at least for my lifetime. He doesn't need laws; he can order anyone to do anything, and he is immune. In his first, uneducated attempt at takeover, he did irreparable damage, esp. through radicalization of the courts. The damage they have done and continue to do can't be repaired in a single lifetime. Now he goes back in after having learned the pitfalls, and with complete immunity to do what he wants. Those who have dranketh of the kool-aid will believe him when he says the radical left made me do it, just like all the enablers in Nazi Germany. And the rest of us will either go along or be imprisoned or worse. And where does that end and how can it be repaired? Where the US has always led the protection of the world, the world will need protection from us. And rather than fighting against the evil dictators, we'll belong to the club. Worst of all, people aren't figuring it out. No matter what he does, he and Fox blame it on radical liberals, and their following grows. Even if they fail this time, this battle will continue, maybe not with Trump, but it certainly doesn't go away if he loses.
We will be fighting either way, it’s true. This doesn’t end with Trump.
This is a lot more fragile than I had thought! Thank you for spelling this out.
Fortunately, I think there are a dozen reasons why Donald will not return to power...
https://barrygander.substack.com/p/14-indicators-that-give-kamala-the
My question is: if by some miracle the Democrats win a majority of the Senate and House seats, is it correct that they're installed on January 1st? And, if so, and if trump won the presidency, could the Senate and House revise the Insurrection Act (and the others) in the 20 days before trump is installed so that he can’t use it/them? They would have a month and a half to get something ready to present on day one (or day two). Would that work? Heck, they could even start planning now, knowing what he’s thinking of doing. And then if Kamala wins, they can still revise the Act(s) without the urgency. What do you think? It would be a giant effort but well worth it in the long run. I hope you won’t answer “It’ll never happen” like my ex used to say when I asked a stupid (to him) football question. 😁
The new Congress convenes on January 3. The Congressional Research Service explains how the first day runs in the House and Senate. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/rl/rl30725 (House of Representatives)
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/RS/RS20722 (Senate)
Can we please not show any more photos of "Agent Orange" (Spike Lee's reference to the obese, demented convicted felon when Spike spoke at the fabulous Atlanta Rally last night). Those photos give many of us nausea and stress. Thank you. I value your work, Jay.
Lafayette Square was foretelling, he already used the military to attack US citizens, peaceful protesters were attacked at his behest so it should come at no surprise that he'd do it again given the chance. Please don't give him the chance, Vote 💙.
Thank you, Jay -- this is an excellent summary of both the laws as they stand now, and the danger we are facing. And we must be vigilant -- it is not just Trump. He may very well lose, but the fascist forces that are aligned with him and support him (not just in the US, but internationally) aren't going anywhere if he loses and fails to overthrow the legitimately elected government. Fascism in America, and in Europe, is on the rise. I agree with you -- we must be clear-eyed about the danger and what we may be called upon to stand up for.
Commander William Adama (Battlestar Galactica) : "There's a reason you separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwrSlzZC31w