Open Thread June 8, 2023 New SCOTUS Ruling
Open Thread June 4, 2023, Angry Bear, angry bear blog
Just a thought, and this is new at this moment. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined with the court’s liberals in affirming a lower-court ruling finding a likely violation of the Voting Rights Act in an Alabama congressional map with one majority Black seat out of seven congressional districts in a state where more than one in four residents is Black.
I believe SCOTUS is getting ready to offer up a no on Biden’s Student Loan aid. So they offer up a positive decision to negate a negative decision. Otherwise, comment of what you desire.
New York draws comparisons to a ‘post-apocalyptic hellscape’ and ‘Blade Runner 2049.’
Boston Globe – just in
Burning eyes. Otherworldly orange-hued skies. Plummeting air quality levels.
As wildfires raged in Canada, millions across the eastern United States were urged to stay inside as smoke shrouded the skies and heavy haze caused numerous disruptions across the country.
In New York City, the extreme conditions invited stark comparisons of post-apocalyptic films like “Blade Runner 2049″ and warnings about the drastic consequences of climate change.
Social media was filled with dystopian scenes of masked individuals walking vacated streets, an obscured Manhattan skyline, and memes evoking the pervasive sense of unease. On Facebook, a doctor in Syracuse named Ken Strumpf summed up the situation.
“We are right in the path of the smoke from Canada,” he wrote. “I can taste the air.”
See some of the reactions below.
Post-apocalyptic comparisons
Gone were the clear skies and crowded parks. In their place were scenes of ruin, as if from another planet.
One person tweeted it was “the most post apocalyptic a place has ever felt.”
Others saw the hazy skies as a sign of things to come.
“Due to hundreds of uncontrolled wildfires across Canada, New York City looks like a post-apocalyptic hellscape,” another person added. “If you want a prelude of what the world is going to look like if we do not address man-made climate change — this is it.”
Dire climate change warnings
Climate experts and concerned citizens alike sounded the alarm as haze descended on New York City.
“With global temperatures on the rise, the need to urgently reduce wildfire risk is critical. We must make peace with nature. We cannot give up,” tweeted António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations. …
Fred:
Any time you feel p to doing a post, let me know. The topics are there that you put up as articles.
I see myself as more of an editor than an author. I have access to some good news sources of a generally liberal character and I am able to pass along pieces from (IMO) interesting writers who do the hard work, which I can post, with considerable light editing sometimes of material that I consider irrelevant or inapproporiate. Thanks for indulging me as much as you do.
Fred:
Every four days, I will put up an open thread. I will also have one comment on a topic to lead it off. That should give you enough space to post on various topics.
Here’s the latest on the fires shrouding parts of the continent in a haze.
NY Times – just in
Hundreds of fires raging across Eastern Canada continued to spread clouds of dangerous pollution across much of the eastern United States on Thursday. Officials issued warnings about air quality in a broad swath of the country, from New York west to Indiana and as far south as the Carolinas.
Major cities including Philadelphia, Washington and New York woke up to unhealthy levels of air pollution, one day after New York City registered its worst air quality readings in decades. Although conditions in parts of the Northeast on Thursday were expected to be better than the day before, the noxious air was spreading across a growing part of the country.
The source of the smoke is an outbreak of blazes in eastern Canada, which have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes. About 250 wildfires burned out of control in the eastern part of the country as of early Thursday, the authorities said, about 150 of them in Quebec. Some have been burning for weeks.
The smoky haze closed the National Zoo, disrupted flights and forced sudden changes of plans. In Richmond, Va., where Wednesday’s orange haze gave way to ashy gray skies on Thursday, Laura Holliday, a former resident of wildfire prone California, said the smoke crisis gave her a sense of déjà vu.
“I feel like the wildfire vibe and the lingering sense of doom that it creates is sort of familiar to me,” she said. “I’m just trying to stay inside.”
Here’s what else to know:
The smoke that choked New York on Wednesday was expected to push southward on Thursday and move west, into the Ohio River Valley, on Friday, the National Weather Service said in a forecast. It is expected to appear as a widespread haze that could dip as far south as Florida, and not the dense mass of smoke that impacted New York on Wednesday.
A storm system swirling off the coast of Nova Scotia in recent days blew smoke from the fires south into the United States. Forecast models for Thursday showed that thick smoke could return to New York later in the day if sea breezes pushed smoke currently hovering off the coast back inland.
The effects of the fires are expected to be noticeable even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Scientists at the Climate and Environmental Research Institute in Norway who are tracking the smoke through the atmosphere said it has moved over Greenland and Iceland since June 1, and observations in southern Norway have confirmed increasing concentrations of aerosols. …
Smoke from Canadian wildfires will be in the atmosphere for foreseeable future
Boston Globe – June 8
A persistent stalled upper level storm system over northern New England continues to capture smoke from forest fires in Canada and propel it south and westward into the northeastern US.
As we begin the second week of June, things are going to continue on a similar note to the first. Expect cool air, clouds, and more smoke. So far, the month has been 3 degrees cooler than average and slightly drier than one would expect for the first week — but not dramatically so. …
Nearly 10 million acres have burned in fires across parts of Canada. Here, the smoke is going to continue to be in the atmosphere for the foreseeable future. Anytime the upper level winds are conducive, it will end up in New England.
If we started to see more heat and humidity, the winds would flip around to the south, and the smoke would not be evident — but then we’d have to contend with heat and humidity.
Although not common, the smoke isn’t new.
On May 19, 1780, smoke from forest fires ended up moving south from Vermont and across Cape Cod. At that time, obviously, there were no satellites and nothing like social media. Many people thought that doomsday was at hand with the eerie glow in the atmosphere. …
Sunday is going to be the best day of the weekend and feel like summer, with readings well into the 70s and abundance sunshine.
The unsettled pattern could return by Tuesday.
Here’s the latest on the fires shrouding parts of the continent in a haze.
NY Times – just in
Hundreds of fires raging across Eastern Canada continued to spread clouds of dangerous pollution across much of the eastern United States on Thursday. Officials issued warnings about air quality in a broad swath of the country, from New York west to Indiana and as far south as the Carolinas. …
Your hypothesis on student loan decision is probably untestable. Could be right, but not clear why Roberts and Kavanaugh would care much….derailing student loan relief is going to have the same intense reaction if it happens notwithstanding any other decision. Maybe they just felt that the winning side had the better case.
I think it broader than the student loan decision ~ it’s becoming a pattern …
Ten Bears:
New post up relating to Student loans. Than you for the comment. Was wondering where you were.
Justice Department Charges Trump in Documents Case
NY Times – June 9
The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Miami, is the first time a former US president has faced federal charges.
The Justice Department on Thursday took the legally and politically momentous step of lodging federal criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump, accusing him of mishandling classified documents he kept upon leaving office and then obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them.
Mr. Trump confirmed on his social media platform that he had been indicted. The charges against him include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and a conspiracy to obstruct justice, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department made no comment on the indictment Thursday and did not immediately make the document public.
The indictment, handed up by a grand jury in Federal District Court in Miami, is the first time a former president has faced federal charges. It puts the nation in an extraordinary position, given Mr. Trump’s status not only as a onetime commander in chief but also as the current front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination to face President Biden, whose administration will now be seeking to convict his potential rival of multiple felonies.
Mr. Trump is expected to surrender to the authorities on Tuesday, according to a person close to him and his own post on his social media platform, Truth Social. …
Nation Is Put in Extraordinary Position Ahead of 2024 Race
The Justice Department took the momentous step after an investigation of former President Trump’s handling of classified files.
Here are some of the charges Trump faces.
A grand jury has charged former President Donald J. Trump with a total of seven counts, according to two people familiar with the indictment.
While the precise details of all the charges are not yet clear, the people familiar with the matter said the charges include willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.
Here is a closer look.
Unauthorized retention of national security documents
It is a crime to retain national security documents without authorization and to fail to deliver them to a government official entitled to take custody of them.
To win a conviction, prosecutors would have to show that Mr. Trump knew he was still in possession of the documents after leaving the White House and failed to comply when the government asked him to return them and then subpoenaed him.
Each such charged document would be a separate offense, so it is possible that prosecutors have brought as many as five counts of this offense by citing five different records. A conviction would be theoretically subject to 10 years in prison for each count, although defendants in other Espionage Act cases have received significantly less than the maximum.
To obtain a conviction, prosecutors would also have to prove to the jury that the documents related to the national defense, that they were closely held and that their disclosure could harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.
Although Mr. Trump has claimed — without evidence — that he declassified all the files he took to Mar-a-Lago, prosecutors would not technically need to prove that they were still classified because the Espionage Act predates the classification system and does not refer to it as an element.
Conspiracy Charges
It is a crime to agree with another person to break a law. Prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Trump and some other person had a meeting of the minds about committing a specific crime and that one of them took some step toward that goal. The penalty can be up to five years.
Obstruction
It is a crime to conceal records to obstruct an official effort. Prosecutors would need to show several things, including that Mr. Trump knew he still had files that were subject to the efforts by the National Archives and Records Administration to take custody of presidential records. They would also need to be able to demonstrate that he willfully defied the Justice Department’s subpoena for files marked as classified, and that he intentionally caused his subordinates to fail to turn them all over while leading officials to believe they had complied. The penalty is up to 20 years per offense.
False statement
It is a crime to make a false statement to a law enforcement officer about a fact material to the officer’s investigation. Such crimes carry a penalty of up to five years per offense.
Mr. Trump is not known to have directly made substantive statements to the government, but prosecutors could charge him if they can show that he conspired with or induced another person to lie to the Justice Department about there being no further documents responsive to the subpoena.
Or, if prosecutors can show that he induced his lawyers to unwittingly lie to the Justice Department, they could charge Mr. Trump directly for causing the false statement even if he himself did not commit the offense himself. The law says that “whoever willfully causes an act to be done which if directly performed by him or another would be an offense against the United States, is punishable as a principal.” …
Inside Trump’s Club When the Call Came: You’re Indicted
Former President Donald J. Trump was gathered with his core political advisers in the office near his poolside cottage at his club in Bedminster, N.J., when his phone rang around 7 p.m. on Thursday. On the line, according to two people with knowledge of the call, was one of his lawyers, informing him he had been indicted for the second time in less than three months.
Unlike the first indictment — in a state court in Manhattan related to allegations he had paid hush money to a porn star during the 2016 election — the current charges were federal, and stemmed from his conduct just before leaving office and for roughly 18 months after.
Mr. Trump, always compartmentalizing, immediately moved to a political reaction.
At 7:21 p.m., he did what he used to do so often when he was president: He personally programmed the chyrons on every news channel in the country. He broke the news of his own indictment — drafting and then sending a three-part statement on his social media network, Truth Social, that soon interrupted the nighttime shows on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
The former president posted a screed against the Biden administration, but buried within his attacks on Democrats were pertinent details: not only that he had been indicted, but also that he had been summoned to appear at a Miami courthouse on Tuesday afternoon. …
As speculation intensified ahead of the Justice Department’s notification of the indictment, Mr. Trump’s team pretaped a video of the former president reacting to the expected charges in a speech direct to the camera — and standing in front of what appeared to be a version of a painting of President Theodore Roosevelt and Kaiser Wilhelm II, Germany’s leader during World War I.
Half an hour after he announced his indictment, he posted the video on his social media website. In it, he bashes Democrats, portrays the indictment as evidence of “a nation in decline” and calls himself “an innocent man.”
Mr. Trump’s team had urged Republicans close to him to start issuing statements, and soon his allies obliged: Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said in a tweet, “Sad day for America. God Bless President Trump.”
Speaker Kevin McCarthy went further, calling it a “dark day” and vowing, “House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.” …
Imagine that, Trump indicted for the crimes he accused Hillary Clinton of perpetrating, and swearing that mishandling of secret documents would not happen on his watch. And now, having been caught in the act, swearing that evil Dems are out to get him and to deny him a second term as president, god forbid.
the indictment.
NY Times – just in
Federal prosecutors unsealed indictments on Friday against former President Donald J. Trump and one of his personal aides, Waltine Nauta, revealing devastating new details about a more than yearlong investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material.
The 49-page indictment, containing 37 counts and seven separate charges, gave the clearest picture yet of the files that Mr. Trump took with him when he left the White House. It said he had illegally kept documents concerning “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.” …
The indictment, for the first time, described how Mr. Trump suggested to one of his lawyers that it was possible to tell prosecutors that “we don’t have anything here” after a grand jury subpoena had been issued for all remaining classified material in his possession.
The indictment also said that Mr. Trump kept classified material in several places inside Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Florida, including a bathroom, and that he had Mr. Nauta move roughly 64 boxes from a storage room at the compound to his residence there, but that only about 30 were returned, apparently leaving the rest unaccounted for.
On top of that, prosecutors presented evidence in the document that Mr. Trump had shared a highly sensitive “plan of attack” against Iran to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. in July 2021 — and was recorded on tape describing the material as “highly confidential” and “secret,” while it admitting it had not been declassified. In another incident in September 2021, he shared a top secret military map with a staff member at his political action committee who did not have a security clearance.
It is unusual for prosecutors to unseal an indictment before a defendant shows up in court for an initial appearance. But the decision to release the document in this case came as Mr. Trump and his allies had been aggressively attacking the investigation and, in the view of federal law enforcement officials, distorting elements of the case.
The move was in keeping with the Justice Department’s practice, under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, of releasing information to the public through their filings in court — a tactic the department deployed to release the detailed affidavit used to justify the search of Mr. Trump’s residence in Florida last August.
Trump-Appointed Judge Is Said to Be Handling Documents Case
Former President Donald J. Trump’s criminal indictment on charges stemming from his handling of classified documents will be overseen — at least initially — by a federal judge whom a higher court criticized for a series of rulings that were unusually favorable to Mr. Trump during the early stages of the investigation, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The judge, Aileen M. Cannon, who Mr. Trump appointed to the bench in 2020, is scheduled — at least for now — to preside over the former president’s first appearance in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday, the people said. But it was not clear whether Judge Cannon would remain assigned for the entirety of Mr. Trump’s case. …
Last fall, she presided over an unusual and highly contentious legal battle between the Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s lawyers over whether to pause the documents investigation so that an outside arbiter could review thousands of records seized by the F.B.I. from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.
Ruling for Mr. Trump, Judge Cannon effectively froze a significant portion of the government’s inquiry, barring prosecutors from using the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago for any “investigative purpose” connected to the case against Mr. Trump until the work of the arbiter, known as a special master, was finished.
An appeals court sitting in Atlanta ultimately overruled Judge Cannon, scrapped the special master’s review and allowed the investigation of Mr. Trump to resume unhindered.
In a sharply critical decision, a three-member panel of the appeals court said Judge Cannon never had the proper jurisdiction to intervene in the case and order the review. The court also chided her for stopping federal investigators from using the files seized from Mar-a-Lago, saying there was no justification for treating Mr. Trump differently from any other target of a search warrant. …
What is consciousness?
The Economist – June 9
What is consciousness: The hard problem
“I THINK, therefore I am.” René Descartes’ aphorism has become a cliché. But it cuts to the core of perhaps the greatest question posed to science: what is consciousness? The other phenomena described in this series of briefs—time and space, matter and energy, even life itself—look tractable. They can be measured and objectified, and thus theorised about. Consciousness, by contrast, is subjective. As Descartes’ observation suggests, a conscious being knows he is conscious. But he cannot know that any other being is. Other apparently conscious individuals might be zombies programmed to behave as if they were conscious, without actually being so.
In reality, it is unlikely that even those who advance this proposition truly believe it, as far as their fellow humans are concerned. Cross the species barrier, however, and matters become muddier. Are chimpanzees conscious? Dogs? Codfish? Bees? It is hard to know how to ask them the question in a meaningful way.
Moreover, consciousness is not merely a property of having a complex, active brain, for it can vanish temporarily, even while the brain is healthy and functional. Most people spend a third of their lives in the state described as “sleep”. Unless awoken while dreaming, they have no sense of being conscious during these periods. Recordings of the brain’s electrical activity show, though, that a sleeping brain is often as busy as one that is awake. Subjective though it is, consciousness therefore looks like a specific phenomenon, not a mere side-effect. That suggests it has evolved, and has a biological purpose. These things—specificity and purpose—give researchers something to hang on to. …
(Actually dated Sep 12th 2015.)
Trump’s Case Puts the Justice System on Trial, in a Test of Public Credibility
NY Times – Peter Baker – June 10
(The link above is probably behind a paywall.)
The former president’s efforts to defend against multiple felony counts by discrediting law enforcement pose a grave challenge to democracy.
Former President Donald J. Trump has a lot at stake in the federal criminal case lodged against him. He could, in theory, go to prison for years. But if he winds up in the dock in front of a jury, it is no exaggeration to suggest that American justice will be on trial as well.
History’s first federal indictment against a former president poses one of the gravest challenges to democracy the country has ever faced. It represents either a validation of the rule-of-law principle that even the most powerful face accountability for their actions or the moment when a vast swath of the public becomes convinced that the system has been irredeemably corrupted by partisanship.
Mr. Trump, his allies and even some of his Republican rivals have embarked on a strategy to encourage the latter view, arguing that law enforcement has been hijacked by President Biden and the Democrats to take out his strongest opponent for re-election next year. Few if any of them bothered to wait to read the indictment before backing Mr. Trump’s all-caps assertion that it was merely part of the “GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.” It is now an article of faith, a default tactic or both.
Jack Smith, the special counsel, and his prosecutors knew that defense was coming and have labored to avoid any hint of political motivation with a by-the-book approach, securing the assent of judges and grand jurors along the way. Moreover, their indictment laid out a damning series of facts based on security camera video, text messages and testimony from within Mr. Trump’s own team; even some who have defended him in the past say it will be harder to brush aside the evidence in a courtroom than in the court of public opinion.
In the public arena, though, it may be a one-sided fight. Mr. Trump and his allies can scream as loudly as they can that the system is unfair, but prosecutors are bound by rules limiting how much they can say in response. To the extent that Democrats defend prosecutors, it may only buttress the point Mr. Trump is trying to make to the audience he is trying to reach.
“I think the verdict on democracy ultimately comes down to Republican leaders and Republican voters,” said David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Florida who left the party during the Trump presidency. “Their current weaponization narrative is dangerous and destabilizing, but seems to reflect the party’s early consensus. If they don’t pivot soon to due process and faith in the system, I think we could have very dark days ahead. I do worry.” …
Polls suggest that Mr. Trump has made headway in persuading at least his own supporters that any and all allegations against him are just political. After he was indicted in March by the Manhattan district attorney on state charges related to hush money paid to an adult film actress, the former president’s support among Republicans rose, rather than fell.
While 60 percent of all adults surveyed by CNN afterward approved of the charges, 76 percent agreed that politics played a role in the prosecution. As for the effect on America’s system, 31 percent said the indictment strengthened democracy, while 31 percent said it weakened it.
All of which indicates that the system’s credibility is on the line in a way it has not been before. Many have criticized American justice over the years for systemic racism, excessive punishment, mistreatment of women subjected to assault or other issues, but they did not command the bullhorn of the presidency. When past presidents like Richard M. Nixon or Bill Clinton got in trouble, they defended themselves aggressively, but did not call the whole system into question. …
“In 1972 to 1974, the Republicans participated as good-faith members of the process,” said Garrett Graff, the author of “Watergate: A New History,” published last year. “They saw their roles as legislators first and Republicans second. They definitely were skeptical” initially of the allegations against Nixon, “but they followed the facts where they led.”
Even Nixon’s sharp-tongued vice president, Spiro T. Agnew, was careful about disparaging the justice system broadly. “Agnew, of course, was Nixon’s attack dog, but mainly against the press, not the F.B.I. or the special prosecutor,” Mr. Graff said.
Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is holding nothing back as he assails “the ‘Thugs’ from the Department of Injustice” and calls Mr. Smith a “deranged lunatic.” Republicans like Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona have called for dismantling the F.B.I. “We have now reached a war phase,” he wrote on Twitter on Friday. “Eye for an eye.” Elon Musk said the authorities were showing “far higher interest in pursuing Trump compared to other people in politics.”
Several of Mr. Trump’s competitors for the Republican presidential nomination joined in. Former Vice President Mike Pence compared the indictment to leaders of “third-world nations” who “use a criminal justice system in their country against their predecessors.” Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society.” …
The former president’s defenders generally do not address the substance of the 37 counts against him, but instead make a case of selective prosecution that resonates powerfully among many Republicans: What about Mr. Biden? What about Hunter Biden? What about Hillary Clinton?
They point to the origin of the Russia investigation against Mr. Trump, citing the recent report by the special counsel John H. Durham that harshly criticized the F.B.I. for its handling of the case even though it did not come up with any new blockbuster revelations of politically motivated misconduct nor result in the conviction of any major figure.
They point to Republican congressional inquiries that they say hint at wrongdoing by the Bidens even without confirmation. They point to the continuing federal criminal investigation of the president’s son Hunter, suggesting it has been impeded. And they point to the fact that the president himself is also under investigation over retaining classified documents yet not charged.
The differences between the cases, however, are stark, making apples-to-apples comparisons complicated. In the documents investigation, for instance, Mr. Biden’s advisers by all accounts so far returned the papers to the authorities promptly after discovering them. Mr. Pence did the same after a voluntary search found that the former vice president had kept classified documents, and he was recently cleared by the Justice Department because there was no evidence of willful violations of the law.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, refused to hand over all the documents he had taken from the White House — even after being subpoenaed for them. According to the indictment, he orchestrated an expansive scheme to hide papers and feed lies to authorities seeking them. On two occasions, the indictment charged, Mr. Trump showed secret documents to people without security clearance and indicated that he knew he was not supposed to. …
Two Trump lawyers quit a day after his indictment
NY Times via Boston Globe
Two of former President Donald Trump’s lawyers who had represented him in the classified documents investigation resigned from his legal team the day after he was indicted, according to a statement they released Friday.
The lawyers, James Trusty and John Rowley, left Trump’s defense team in a state of chaos and confusion as he faced the most serious legal threat of his career: a 37-count indictment filed in Miami accusing him of illegally retaining documents after he left office about some of the country’s most sensitive national security secrets and of engaging in a conspiracy with an aide to obstruct the government’s repeated efforts to retrieve them.
Trump announced the departure of Trusty and Rowley in a post Friday on his social media platform, Truth Social. He said he would be represented by a new lawyer, Todd Blanche.
“I want to thank Jim Trusty and John Rowley for their work, but they were up against a very dishonest, corrupt, evil, and ‘sick’ group of people, the likes of which has not been seen before,” the former president wrote. “We will be announcing additional lawyers in the coming days.” …
(The GOP continues to depend on ‘projection’ for its claims of ‘weaponization’ by Dems, since that’s exactly what they and Trump have been doing all along, and is a common logical fallacy they employ.)
Logical Fallacy of Projection
In other news, accross the pond …
Boris Johnson’s Comeback Hopes May Be Dimmer Than He Thinks
NY Times – June 10
The former British prime minister, who resigned from Parliament on Friday, has found his way back into voters’ good graces before. But analysts say there is now almost no plausible path back to power for him.
It is tempting to view Boris Johnson’s sudden resignation from Britain’s Parliament on Friday evening as merely another twist in a serpentine career, a tactical retreat rather than a political epitaph.
After all, the language in his 1,035-word statement was defiant and aggrieved, peppered with reminders of the thumping electoral victory that he had delivered for the Conservative Party less than four years ago and pregnant with the possibility that he could do so again in the future.
As he has on so many other occasions, Mr. Johnson seemed to be channeling his political hero, Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader who was swept out of power in 1945 only to return to Downing Street in triumph six years later.
Yet this time, political analysts expressed skepticism about a Churchillian restoration for Mr. Johnson. With little support beyond a rump of hard-core Brexiteers in Parliament, and a British public that has grown weary of the Boris soap opera, they said there was almost no plausible path back to power for him.
“There is nowhere near the support out there in the country for Boris Johnson as there is for, say, Donald Trump in the States,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London. “The number of voters out there who will support him, come what may, is far, far smaller.” …
BBC: BJ’s statement
Trump Supporters’ Violent Rhetoric in His Defense Disturbs Experts
NY Times – just in
The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action.
The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday.
In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.
The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.
Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Mr. Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”
The former president alerted the public to the indictment on Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”
“Eye for an eye,” wrote Representative Andy Biggs, Republican of Arizona, in a post on Twitter on Friday. …
‘This Is the Final Battle’: Trump Casts His Campaign as an Existential Fight Against His Critics
Donald J. Trump delivered his first post-indictment public remarks on Saturday at the state G.O.P. conventions in Georgia and North Carolina, as his federal indictment dominates the political landscape.
Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday cast both his indictments by prosecutors and his bid for the White House as part of a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that he maintained are destroying the country.
The apocalyptic language came in Mr. Trump’s first public appearance since the 38-count federal indictment against him and a personal aide was unsealed — and in a state where he may soon face additional charges for his efforts to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his 2020 election loss there. It was Mr. Trump’s second indictment in less than three months.
“This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump said in the speech to several thousand activists, delegates and members of the media who gathered in Columbus, Ga., at a brick building that was once an ironworks that manufactured mortars, guns and cannons for the Confederate Army in the Civil War.
Mr. Trump spoke about the threats to the nation. But his escalating language also showed something more fundamental was in increasing jeopardy: his own freedom.
“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists,” the former president said in Georgia, seeming to refer to Democrats. He made similar remarks about the “Deep State,” using the pejorative term he uses for U.S. intelligence agencies and more broadly for any federal government bureaucrat he perceives as a political opponent. He railed against “globalists,” “warmongers” in government and “the sick political class that hates our country.”
Mr. Trump also described the Justice Department as “a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,” calling the special counsel, Jack Smith, “deranged” and “openly a Trump hater.” …
Trump Appointee Will Remain Judge in Documents Case, Clerk Says
The chief clerk of the courts for the Southern District of Florida added that Judge Aileen M. Cannon had been randomly assigned to the case.
The criminal case against President Donald J. Trump over his hoarding of classified documents was randomly assigned to Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a court official for the Southern District of Florida said on Saturday.
The chief clerk of the federal court system there, Angela E. Noble, also confirmed that Judge Cannon would continue to oversee the case unless she recused herself.
The news of Judge Cannon’s assignment raised eyebrows because of her role in an earlier lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump challenging the F.B.I.’s search of his Florida club and estate, Mar-a-Lago. In issuing a series of rulings favorable to him, Judge Cannon, a Trump appointee, effectively disrupted the investigation until a conservative appeals court ruled she never had legitimate legal authority to intervene. …
… The clerk clarified another matter: whether Judge Cannon would continue to handle the case. Since news of Judge Cannon’s assignment emerged early Friday, observers have speculated that it could only be an initial assignment before being handed to another judge.
But Ms. Noble confirmed that no court practice would return the case to be assigned to another judge. In short, Judge Cannon’s assignment is permanent unless she were to step aside.
To alleviate the migrant crisis, ease sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba
Boston Globe – Steven Kinzer – June 7
Our economic punishments of those countries are encouraging people to flee to our shores. Biden could help them and himself by changing course.
… Republicans loudly assert that our southern border is out of control and our immigration policy is a shambles. They’re right. Migrants make vivid props for nativist demagogues.
This is an urgent challenge for President Biden as he faces reelection. Anything he can do to reduce the surge of migrants toward our border will strengthen him politically and weaken his rivals. Yet with strokes of his pen, Biden could take a step that might substantially reduce the migrant flow: Lift sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba.
Human rights advocates have long argued that these sanctions are immoral because they condemn people to poverty for the crime of living under regimes they cannot change. Now they have a new and possibly more persuasive argument. Last month 21 members of Congress urged Biden to recognize that sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela are “a critical contributing factor in the current increase in migration.” One of them, Representative Ro Khanna of California, laid out their case in a television interview.
“Look at what’s causing people to flee Venezuela and Cuba,” he argued. “The Republicans are saying, ‘Let’s sanction them more.’ That’s causing more people to actually leave. Let’s look at rational sanction policy so we’re not causing the influx.”
Venezuela is suffering from a severe economic crisis caused by two main factors: mismanagement by the leftist government and harsh economic sanctions imposed by the United States. Citizens are streaming out of the country. More than 7 million have left since 2015. Many first sought asylum in nearby countries, but after facing difficulties they turned their eyes northward. Venezuelans trek through the rugged Darién jungle in Panama and then stagger toward Texas, more than 3,000 miles from their homeland.
Last year US border police intercepted 190,000 refugees from Venezuela, more than in any previous year. Another 65,000 sought to cross illegally during the first four months of 2023. This intensifies a crisis that became acute a few years ago as a result of migration from Central America.
The other big border news is the rush of Cubans seeking to enter the United States by land. Lured in part by new visa-free flights to Nicaragua, Cubans land there and begin walking northward. They camp along the US border and, with countless others, wait for a chance to cross. A staggering quarter-million Cubans — more than 2 percent of the island’s population — arrived at the US border last year. The flow is continuing; another 32,000 arrived during March.
Both Venezuela and Cuba are ruled by governments the United States detests. Sanctions were intended to force those governments to collapse or at least to change political course. Their only real effect, however, has been to help impoverish people to the point where enormous numbers now seek to flee. …
American sanctions on Cuba, which have been in place for more than 60 years, are a vestige of the Cold War. No other country in the hemisphere supports them. As for Venezuela, American leaders sought for a while to help an opposition figure, Juan Guaidó, overthrow the government there. By 2019 they had persuaded more than a dozen Latin American countries to “recognize” Guaidó as Venezuela’s true president. One by one, those countries are giving up. Colombia and Uruguay recently sent ambassadors to Venezuela after years of broken relations. Paraguay will soon follow.
The United States should join them. Sanctions have contributed to unemployment, scarcities, and general misery in Venezuela and Cuba. Unwise policy choices and poor governance have contributed to these two collapses, but sanctions play a big role. Arguing that they should be lifted for humanitarian reasons has proven futile. The new argument is political and therefore more likely to be heard.
Biden’s rivals castigate him whenever there is upheaval on our southern border. They use vivid publicity stunts, like shipping refugees to Martha’s Vineyard, to intensify public anger over migration. Lifting sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba would carry a political cost in Washington. Not lifting them could carry an even greater cost on Election Day.