Susan B. Glasser: The Trump Presidency Is Still an Active Crime Scene

Every Administration produces a shelf full of memoirs, of the score-settling variety and otherwise. There’s a few golden nuggets to be mined even from the most unreadable, obscure, and self-serving of such memoirs. Even before it ended, the Trump Administration produced a remarkable number of these accounts, as wave after wave of fired press secretaries, ousted Cabinet officials, and disgruntled former aides signed lucrative book deals. There were so many books seeking to explain Trump and his times that the book critic of the Washington Post wrote his own book about all of the books. Trump’s fired executive assistant—ousted because she claimed, at a boozy dinner with reporters, that the President had said nasty things about his daughter Tiffany—wrote a book. Trump’s first two press secretaries wrote books. First Lady Melania Trump’s former best friend wrote a book. Trump’s third national-security adviser, John Bolton, wrote an explosive book with direct-from-the-Situation-Room allegations of Presidential malfeasance that might have turned the tide in Trump’s first impeachment trial had Bolton actually testified in it. And none of those even covered the epic, Presidency-ending year of 2020.

The bottom line is that the story of the Trump Presidency still has important unanswered questions that the forthcoming pile of books cannot answer. And they have an urgency about them that unanswered questions about past Administrations usually don’t, given the ongoing threat to our democracy: Trump is not only preparing to run again but is determined to mold the G.O.P. into a single-issue Party, the ideology of which consists solely of disputing the legitimacy of the election that turned him out of office. The Trump Presidency is not yet, alas, simply a matter for booksellers and book writers; it’s an active crime scene. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-trump-presidency-is-still-an-active-crime-scene

Bess Levin: Trump Tells His Supporters Not To Vote In The Next Election, Which Would Actually Be Great For Humanity

If you’ve lived through the last five years and haven’t been forced to medicate yourself to the point of unconsciousness, you’re probably aware that Donald Trump has been very bad for society, on account of the racism and the corruption and the mass casualties and the general, ongoing assault on democracy. Because of that, it would be ideal if neither the 45th president nor his acolytes sat at the seat of power ever again, though, unfortunately, that’s no sure thing. For one thing, Republicans have a shot at flipping the Senate in 2022, and there are a disturbing number of GOP lawmakers there whom Trump has wrapped around his morally bankrupt finger. For another, Trump is reportedly “laying the groundwork” for a 2024 run, and if you recall, 74 million people inexplicably voted for him in 2020, which wasn’t enough to actually win but was a disturbing number nevertheless.

Obviously also at issue is that since Trump lost to Joe Biden, Republicans have responded by attempting to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as possible. Allies of the former guy have been paving the way to meddle in future elections by passing bills that “allow Republican-controlled state legislatures or election boards to sideline or override local election administrations in Democratic strongholds,” which would, per The Atlantic, let state legislatures or their appointees interfere “in local decision-making, purge voter rolls, and manipulate the number and location of polling places. It would also allow Republicans in Arizona, Georgia, and elsewhere to do something Trump tried and failed to do in 2020: throw out ballots in rival strongholds in order to overturn a statewide result.” Which is bone-chillingly terrifying.

But you know what would be great? If somehow we could wave a magic wand and ensure that none of the people who support Trump or Trump-endorsed candidates show up to vote, which would be a tremendous turn of events for humanity, though one that would clearly never happen unless—what? What’s that you say? Donald Trump has, in an incredible self-own, told his base to stay home and not vote in the next two elections?

Setting aside for a moment the idea of Trump instructing millions of people not to vote, which would have the obvious effect of helping the other side, it’s important to note that Trump is still—still!—clinging to the idea that the 2020 election was stolen and there is a chance it could be overturned and he could be “reinstated” at the White House. That’s extremely scary because, in case anyone missed it the first thousand times, there is absolutely zero evidence that fraud played a role in the last election, despite multiple attempts by conservatives to conduct “audits” of results in battleground states, which have thus far only proven how badly Trump lost.

Nevertheless, we absolutely love the idea of Trump throwing a hissy fit and saying, “Oh yeah? You won’t overturn Joe Biden’s win? My people will show you!” First, because it underscores how very, very stupid he is, and second, because he and his allies have done this in the past and it predictably worked out great for Democrats. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/donald-trump-tells-supporters-not-to-vote

Dean Obeidallah: Biden should defund states that restrict voting rights. Period.

The GOP is willing to punish millions — even an entire state — to achieve its political goals. Why can't Democrats do the same?

Congressional Democrats have a golden opportunity to protect voting rights when the House of Representatives returns to session this week to lay the groundwork for approving two different infrastructure proposals: By taking a page from the GOP’s playbook, they should use the infrastructure measures to “defund” states that are suppressing voting and enacting laws that make it easier for Republican officials to overturn election results they don’t like.

Let’s be blunt: Given the GOP’s holy war on voting, time is running out for our democracy. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, since January, 17 GOP-controlled states have enacted 28 laws that “restrict access to the vote,” from making it more challenging to vote in person and by mail to purging voter rolls — with many measures by design disproportionately affecting people of color. Alarmingly, at least for those who believe in democracy, some of these laws potentially allow Republican officials to overturn elections if they don’t agree with the results. https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/biden-should-defund-states-restrict-voting-rights-period-n1277411/

Jonathan M. Winer: Road Map for a Constitutional Coup: The Republican Plan for Legislative Nullification of the Popular Vote for President

That plan, drafted by the then-number three at Justice, Jeffrey Bossert Clark, Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, amounts to a road map for the current and future efforts by Trump and his Republican allies to ensure that he, or another Republican, secures the presidency in 2024 regardless of who wins the popular vote or the true Electoral College vote.

The coup doctrine enunciated by Clark remains alive. To date, there has been no reporting on whom he was working with in the Trump campaign, the Trump White House or beyond to develop it. Nor has any Congressional committee yet secured Clark’s testimony to gather those facts. Similar gaps remain regarding the coordination of Eastman’s activities, and how Eastman got connected to Trump. Since the elections, we have seen a coordinated nationwide strategy by which Republican-controlled state legislatures have been enacting election laws to give themselves greater control over the outcomes.

These new laws begin with voter suppression provisions to make it difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies to vote. They also introduce new controls to allow partisan state legislatures to maintain control over elections to give Republicans greater control of vote-counting processes; reduce the authority of governors and secretaries of state to exercise independent judgment about who has won the popular vote in the state; and potentially even move certification dates to enable the legislature to invalidate a governor’s certification after the fact.

The Republicans pushing this scheme on a national basis characterize their actions as entirely proper under the Independent State Legislature doctrine. But what the country now faces looking forward to in 2024 is a highly partisan Supreme Court that could accept the plan laid out by Clark, enabling partisan state legislatures to decide Presidential elections in what should rightly be called “Legislative Nullification.” Nullification has a long and disgraced historical lineage, from nullification of federal tariffs (South Carolina in the 1830s), to federal desegregation orders (Arkansas in the 1950s), to health care policy (Texas in 2020). This latest nullification scheme aims at nullifying democracy itself. https://washingtonspectator.org/road-map-for-a-constitutional-coup/

Bess Levin: Trump Will Be Deposed Under Oath This Week, And You Know What Happens When Trumps Are Under Oath

They tend to lie, is what they do. 

Since leaving office last January, Donald Trump has had his hands full trying and failing to overturn the 2020 election, blackballing Republicans who dared to hold him responsible for the Capitol attack, and crashing both weddings and memorial services, where he’s no doubt made both the newlyweds and the newly deceased uncomfortable. Another area that’s kept him quite busy? His ongoing legal woes, which are significant and could result in him being forced to turn over large sums of money, losing his business, and/or going to prison.

Obviously, the most significant legal matters facing the ex-president are the criminal probes, which are being conducted in Georgia, D.C., and New York. In New York, the Trump Organization and its longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, were charged with more than a dozen crimes in July—which they’ve both pleaded not guilty to—and recently, prosecutors have given Weisselberg many, many reasons to flip and cooperate against Trump. Elsewhere, Trump is the subject of numerous lawsuits, and in at least two cases, has been ordered to sit for depositions under oath, situations which tend not to bring out the best in people with whom he shares DNA.

In related news, in December 2020 and February 2021, respectively, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. were deposed under oath by D.C.’s attorney general, and it certainly seemed as though they lied about their involvement in their father’s 2017 inauguration. So there’s probably at least a tiny possibility Trump will also fail to tell the truth. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/donald-trump-under-oath-depositions

Max Boot: It’s not Biden’s fault that covid is still such a big problem. Blame his GOP critics.

Fox’s anchors — most of whom are vaccinated themselves — elevate backward vaccine resisters such as basketball star Kyrie Irving to the status of folk heroes. Predictably, Fox used Colin Powell’s death from covid to trash vaccines, even though his immune system had been compromised by cancer and Parkinson’s disease.

Yet, despite this infuriating right-wing sabotage, the tide is turning. Between Sept. 9 and Oct. 18, the average number of daily vaccinations increased 26 percent while the average number of new cases fell 43 percent. This isn’t all because of the mandates, but they certainly helped.

Biden gambled with vaccine mandates — and that gamble is now paying off. Our coronavirus vaccination rate is still too low, and our covid death rate is still too high compared with those of other Western countries, but that’s hardly his fault. Blame Republicans: Only 58 percent of them are vaccinated, compared with 90 percent of Democrats.

There’s not much Biden can do about masochistic right-wingers such as radio host Dennis Prager, who says he deliberately became infected with covid-19 to develop “natural immunity.” But the president is doing almost everything within his power to combat the pandemic — and his efforts are paying off.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/19/its-not-bidens-fault-that-covid-is-still-such-big-problem-blame-his-gop-critics/