Trump's refusal to take the stand encapsulates the MAGA approach to politics. Since the 2020 presidential election, he and his surrogates have made repeated accusations and statements about how the system is rigged against them and alleged there is evidence that proves them right. Crucially, they make those arguments only in front of television cameras or on podcasts and radio. They refuse to make them under oath in a court of law, where there are penalties for lying.
This week's featured post is "Alito's Flags Aren't the Worst of It", concerning the Supreme Court's ruling (with Alito writing the majority opinion) in a racial gerrymanding case.
This week everybody was talking about Alito's flags
It all started last week, when the NYT revealed that an upside-down American flag flew over Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's home in Virginia for several days between the January 6 insurrection and Biden's inauguration. An upside-down flag is a traditional distress symbol, and was used by the "stop the steal" movement that believed Biden's 2020 win was illegitimate. Alito blamed the flag on his wife, whom he said was responding to some kind of dispute with the neighbors. (He provided no further details, and also said that the dog ate his homework.)
Then Wednesday the NYT reported that a second insurrectionist flag, the Appeal To Heaven flag sometimes associated with Christian nationalism, flew over the Alitos' vacation home on the Jersey shore in July, August, and September of 2023. (It's not clear whether it flew continuously or sporadically.) This flag was also carried by January 6 insurrectionists.
Since its creation during the American Revolution, the flag has carried a message of defiance: The phrase “appeal to heaven” comes from the 17th-century philosopher John Locke, who wrote of a responsibility to rebel, even use violence, to overthrow unjust rule. “It’s a paraphrase for trial by arms,” Anthony Grafton, a historian at Princeton University, said in an interview. “The main point is that there’s no appeal, there’s no one else you can ask for help or a judgment.”
According to the Supreme Court's own Code of Conduct, which it released last November to demonstrate it was not completely lawless following revelations of Clarence Thomas' corruption,
A Justice should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the Justice’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, that is, where an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant circumstances would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties.
The Court is currently hearing a number of cases related to January 6, and has already ruled that states cannot remove Trump from their ballots on 14th-Amendment participating-in-an-insurrection grounds. Alito's impartiality "might reasonably be questioned" by "an unbiased and reasonable person" in all these cases. But of course he will not recuse himself and Chief Justice Roberts will not demand that he do so, because in practice the Court has no code of conduct and does not recognize any judicial ethics.
Likewise Congress will not solve the problem. The filibuster will prevent the Senate from passing any binding code for the Court, and Republicans would never participate in an impeachment. I agree with Joyce Vance, that the only conceivably effective response needs to come from the voters:
This one, as I’ve written, is up to us, and to investing in the political cycle. Don’t despair, vote! ... If you want a Congress that will pass ethics reform for the Supreme Court, as difficult of an endeavor as it may be to craft rules that will pass constitutional muster, then vote for people who will go on record as supporting it.
It's unlikely we'll get a majority large enough to impeach Alito or Thomas. But if it becomes clear that their in-your-face defiance of all constraints is a drag on the Republican Party, partisan interests may start to rein them in.
and international courts v Israel
This week, international courts made two moves against Israel. Last Monday International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Kahn sought arrest warrants for leaders of both Hamas and Israel.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and two others are accused of various crimes associated with October 7, including the killings of several hundred Israeli civilians, taking hostages, rape, and so on.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant are accused of starvation of civilians as a method of warfare, intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population, and other related offenses.
Judges of the ICC have not yet approved the warrants. If they are approved, they may not have much effect beyond their influence on international opinion. Neither set of leaders is likely to surrender itself, and the ICC commands no military force able to bring them in.
President Biden denounced the prosecutor's move:
The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.
Friday, the International Court of Justice
ordered Israel to “[i]mmediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The Court also ordered Israel to open the Rafah crossing, to allow United Nations fact-finders to enter Gaza, and to report to the Court within one month regarding its compliance with the Court’s orders. The Court also reaffirmed its prior orders and reiterated its call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other armed groups.
Again, the international court has little ability to enforce this order, but it may have some effect on popular opinion around the world.
If you're like me, you may not have previously realized the the ICC and the ICJ are separate entities. Both are located in The Hague. The difference seems to be that the ICC prosecutes individuals, while the ICJ adjudicates disputes among nations.
Another diplomatic blow to Israel: Spain, Ireland, and Norway will formally recognize a Palestinian state tomorrow.
and the Trump trials
Both sides have now rested their cases. The judge declared a break so that summations and jury instructions could occur without interruption by the holiday weekend. Summations begin tomorrow, and the jury should be ready to deliberate later this week.
What they will do is anyone's guess. An outright acquittal seems unlikely, given the strength of the prosecution's case. But to prevent a conviction the defense only needs to convince one juror. That juror doesn't even have to believe Trump is innocent, just that the case against him hasn't been proved beyond reasonable doubt.
To no one's surprise, Trump himself did not testify, despite saying many times that he would.
He would have been better off not offering a defense at all. It would have looked like a power move: The government hasn't proved its case, so we have nothing to answer.
Instead, the defense called one technical witness and then Robert Costello, who was a disaster. Not only was Costello disrespectful of Judge Merchan, leading the judge to clear the courtroom to tell Costello how close he was to a contempt of court ruling, but his presence allowed the prosecution to introduce emails Costello wrote that captured just how mob-like TrumpWorld is.
Emails between Costello and Cohen were read aloud to leave the indelible memory in the minds of the jurors that Trump and Giuliani were conspiring with Costello to make sure Cohen didn't cooperate with the government. There is even an email from Costello to Cohen saying, "Rudy said this communication channel must be maintained...sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places," and one from Costello to his law partner saying, "Our issue is to get Cohen on the right page without giving the appearance that we are following instructions from Giuliani or the President," (which they clearly were.) When Cohen didn't sign on with him right away he told his law partner Cohen was "slow-playing us and the President...What should I say to this asshole? He's playing with the most powerful man on the planet." Didn't he know who he was messing with?
Costello was supposed to undermine Michael Cohen's credibility, but I suspect he enhanced it. The defense was trying to make Cohen look like a thug, but they overshot and made everyone connected with Trump look like a thug.
and Trump's assassination claim
At some point years ago, "Trump lies" stopped being a headline; it happens every day, so it's not news. But this week included a lie so brazen and so outrageous that it deserves attention.
In a fundraising email responding to right-wing media reports that offered a distorted reading of a newly-unsealed court filing in Trump's classified documents case, Trump falsely claimed Biden was "locked & loaded ready to take me out" when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August of 2022.
In a separate post on his Truth Social platform Tuesday evening, Trump further said he was "shown Reports" that Biden's DOJ "AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE" in their search of the property for classified documents.
So what's real? FBI search warrants have boilerplate language that is actually about limiting lethal force:
law enforcement officers of the Department of Justice may use deadly force only when necessary, that is, when the officer has a reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to the officer or to another person.
In a court filing in the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump's lawyers left out the "only", leaving "may use deadly force when necessary". That document recently got unsealed, and Trump conspiracy theorists jumped on it online, eventually leading Marjorie Taylor Greene and Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro to start discussing the "assassination plot" like it was a real thing, including imagining shoot-outs with the Secret Service. From there the wild story got back around the Trump, who pushed it for all it was worth. It's not clear whether he realized that he started the misperception himself.
In reality, it has been known since the day it happened that the FBI had coordinated with the Secret Service and timed the raid so that Trump would be out of town. Trump knows this. MTG knows this. Jesse Watters and Jeanine Pirro know it.
Jack Smith has responded to this incident by noting the possible danger the rumor poses to FBI agents involved in the raid, who could be witnesses in Trump's Mar-a-Lago trial, if Judge Cannon ever allows it to happen. He has asked Cannon to modify Trump's terms of release "to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation and prosecution of this case."
I can't imagine the boot-licking Judge Cannon acknowledging that Trump lied or that his violent supporters predictably threaten the people his rhetoric targets. But she'll have to respond somehow.
and you also might be interested in ...
I can't say I'm surprised that Nikki Haley has finally said that she's voting for Trump. Did she previously say a lot of bad things about the Great Man? Join the club. Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Ron DeSantis -- they all said bad things about him before abasing themselves to kiss the ring.
But the people who think Haley is now in the running to be Trump's VP are crazy. Trump's VP has to satisfy these conditions:
- You can't outshine the boss. (That eliminates not just Haley, but MTG and Vivek as well.)
- You can't have your own following independent of the boss. (So: not DeSantis or Haley.)
- You have to be willing to commit treason for Trump. (He's not making the Mike Pence mistake again.)
- You must be willing to repeat whatever claim the boss makes, no matter how absurd or counterfactual. (That's why so many VP wannabees showed up at Trump's courtroom wearing matching suits and red ties.)
Just to remind us that there's no situation so good that a person can't screw it up, former NFL star Antonio Brown, who earned $80 million during his 12-year career, has filed for bankruptcy.
If you were worried at all about Amy Klobuchar's ability to hang onto her Senate seat in Minnesota, you can stop. Republicans looks set to nominate an absolute loon.
Cory Doctorow says that "AIs and self-driving cars are the new jetpacks". It turns out that there was never any reason to think Jetson-style jetpacks were feasible.
In a terrific new 99 Percent Invisible episode, Chris Berube tracks the history of all those jetpacks we saw on TV for decades, and reveals that they were all the same jetpack, flown by just one guy, who risked his life every time he went up in it. The jetpack in question — technically a “rocket belt” — was built in the 1960s by Wendell Moore at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, with funding from the DoD. The Bell rocket belt used concentrated hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which burned at temperatures in excess of 1,000'. The rocket belt had a maximum flight time of just 21 seconds.
But Moore was a great showman, and got it into our heads that jetpacks were an inevitable part of the future -- to the point that many people my age lament "Where are our jetpacks? We were promised jetpacks."
Doctorow explains how the same kind of hucksterism is happening today with self-driving cars and AI in general. Big things are always just a year or two away, and if the impressive demo videos are mostly fake, they're not lies, they're "premature truths".
and let's close with something thought-provoking
If you're looking for blogs to read, let me suggest Jess Piper's "The View from Rural Missouri". She has that rare touch for telling personal stories that capture something larger. Two posts to get you started: "Losing My Religion", about how she drifted away from her Evangelical upbringing, and "Daddy Died a MAGA" about how the right-wing echo chamber turned her father into someone she couldn't recognize.
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