Trumpdate (3.31.24):
[TS] Obviously not a normal news day.
1.) TRUMP GUILTY ON ALL 34 FELONY COUNTS
In short: Trump has been found guilty of using a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the outcome of the 2016 election.
First in US history. A US President has become a felon. [TS] 34 for 45.
A few reactions:
Every member of the jury just non-trivially increased their odds of being on the wrong end of political violence, all of them that weren't total morons know it, and they did this anyway. Genuine moment of unironic courage.
I'm honestly surprised. Any one of these jurors could have hung the jury, gone public, and been set for life as a right-wing media darling. Book deals, speaking circuit, position in a future Trump admin, whatever they wanted. But all 12 put public service over personal gain.
it rules that a jury of rando New Yorkers is braver than several federal judges and basically every single senator
Sad day for the presidency, a sad day in our political history, but a triumph for the rule of law
Seems like Alvin Bragg understood the quality of his case better than the Twitter experts and Trump apologists did.
The fact that twelve Americans came, from all different backgrounds, identities, & ideologies, to one unanimous decision is a sign of strength for our nation. It’s not a joyous occasion to convict a former President but we should celebrate our democratic ideals & processes.
[TS] Republican reactions boil down to a mixture of “Kangaroo court” and “sham show trial.” Of course all of the usual suspects had a response already teed up:
House Speaker/Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA)
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
Gov. Greg Abbot (R-TX)
[TS] Abbott is a former AG, a former State Supreme Court Justice - and here he is casting doubt on our judicial system. Disgraceful.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO)
Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS)
[CONTEXT] Joe Biden was not on the Jury.
Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA)
Chris LaCivita - Trump’s senior advisor to his 2024 campaign - laying out a new GOP litmus test. If you call for respect for the rule of law, Trump will go after you.
RFK Jr:
The bar has fallen so low that the brave Republicans are those who are keeping silent and not condemning the legal system.
[TS] The vast majority of Trump supporters cling to one line of argument: “You’re jailing your political opponent.” This, of course, doesn’t make any sense. One can always debate the case on the merits, but the idea that a prominent politician should have carte blanche to commit crimes because any effort at accountability would constitute "jailing your political opponents” is absurd.
[TS] The other argument is “Bragg weaponized the legal system to indict Trump on charges that never would have been brought against anyone else.” Why is this also silly? Because the Obama DOJ put John Edwards (a Democrat) on trial for the same* thing in North Carolina. The argument might make sense if he wasn’t prosecuted.
*obviously not exactly the same - but extremely similar: John Edwards was accused of using campaign funds to cover up an extramarital affair and resulting pregnancy, which prosecutors argued was intended to protect his political career and avoid negative publicity that could harm his presidential campaign.
[TS] Ok. The Trump story obviously dominated the news, so I’m going to just do rapid fire for the rest:
SF Chronicle: San Francisco has removed the “Appeal To Heaven” flag which has been flying outside of City Hall for decades. This is the same flag that was flying outside of the Alito’s beach home.
IRS is announcing that Direct File will be available in all 50 states. [TS] Take that turbo tax.
Chief Justice John Roberts declines meeting request from Senators Durbin/Whitehouse, says it’s up to Alito to recuse.
TX Republican Party 2024 platform calls for “equal protection of the law” from the moment of fertilization. Effectively defining abortion as a homicide.
In a new brief, nine Republican secretaries of state are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up an election case out of Pennsylvania and reconsider the independent state legislature theory, a radical legal theory that could upend American elections. [TS] This would make a coup legal.
FT: France leads initiative on sending military trainers to Ukraine
A: The *cumulative price change* under Biden is the highest since Jimmy Carter:
Atlantic: The Maternal-Mortality Crisis That Didn’t Happen
CRFB: The cost of extending the 2017 TCJA tax cuts is 𝟓𝟎 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐞𝐫 than originally believed.
[TS] I guess the main question facing policymakers is this: Is it a good use of $4 trillion to spend it on tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy? Also, to state the obvious: Tax cuts do not, in fact, pay for themselves.
BBC: Israel takes over the souther buffer zone known as Philadephi Corridor — now controlling Gaza’s entire land border.
SLATE: The Donald Trump I Saw on The Apprentice:
[TS] Mark Burnett will never release the tape.
House Committee on Agriculture says CBO is undercounting the "savings" from enacting long-overdue limits on the Ag Secretary. Why? So the fake offsets would let it increase spending, of course. [TS] Who doesn’t love a free lunch?
Real GDP revised down to 1.3% in 1Q from an initial report of 1.6%. The trade deficit widened & shaved 0.9% from growth alone. Another 0.5% was lost to a drop in inventories; those losses should provide a tailwind for manufacturing. The largest downward revision was consumer spending.
POLITICO: Top Biden aides signal openness to letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons
WSJ: Iran is beginning to build a new nuclear facility in Natanz. “This one is underneath a mountain, and it is projected to go over 100 meters deep, buried in concrete, heavily fortified,” Dubowitz says. The concern is that “the Israelis won’t be able to bomb it, and even we, with our massive ordnance penetrators, won’t be able to destroy it. This calls for stopping it before it can be built.”
[TS] So, Trump abandoned the JCPAO (aka The Iran Nuclear deal) in 2018 because it was “terrible” and he was going to get a “better deal.” Of course, that “better deal” was vaporware and now we’re here.
