Jan 6, 2024
NSFW
Sorry to drop this on you like this, but I think it needs to be noticed.
The assholes in the pickup truck are Nazis, leafletting a neighborhood in West Palm Beach FL with some pretty nasty antisemitic shit.
The asshole Nazis in the pickup truck recorded the video, and then posted it on social media. They're proud of what they're doing.
I don't know what it's going to take, but we need to figure out how to beat this shit, and soon.
There's something very wrong with Florida.
Nazis get confronted for tossing anti-Semitic flyers on driveways.
byu/Bizzyguy inPublicFreakout
Today's Today
A long-ish think-piece from WaPo.
Pressure from family members and advocates for accused rioters was amplified by online influencers and right-wing media figures, leading lawmakers to minimize, excuse and deny the violence and rehabilitate Trump
Donald Trump spent the days after Jan. 6, 2021, privately fuming about the election and his media coverage. Leaving office with an approval rating below 40 percent, he skipped Joe Biden’s inauguration and retreated to Mar-a-Lago. He was banned from posting on Twitter and avoided public appearances.
The next month, he accepted an invitation to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, his first post-presidential speech. On the drive, Trump seemed surprised that the roads again closed for his motorcade, an adviser said. A rapturous reception appeared to lift his spirits, the adviser said. Still, his speech made no mention of the event that prompted his isolation: the deadly attack by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.
In those early months of lying low, Trump himself was not the main driver in rewriting Republicans’ collective memory of Jan. 6.
Attempts to minimize, excuse or deny the violence of that day began with people returning home from the mob and intensified with family members of rioters, including the mother of a woman killed at the Capitol. Their cause became championed by pro-Trump writers Julie Kelly and Darren Beattie, and amplified by prominent right-wing media figures. The grass-roots and media pressure then spread from far-right lawmakers such as Reps. Paul A. Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene to take over the Republican mainstream.
This changing view of Jan. 6 among Republicans offered Trump a lifeline, paving the way for his political comeback. By October 2021, when he claimed “the insurrection took place on November 3, Election Day,” rather than on Jan. 6, he was merely repeating a meme that was already widely circulating on Facebook.
“There were other people planting the seeds, and then Trump comes to harvest them,” said Jared Holt, an extremism researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, of the rewriting of Jan. 6. “It’s canon at this point.”
Now, on the third anniversary of the nation’s first interruption to the peaceful transfer of power since the Civil War era, Republicans’ attitudes about Jan. 6 are increasingly unmoored from other Americans, and Trump holds a commanding lead in the race for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
The share of Republicans who said the Jan. 6 protesters who entered the Capitol were “mostly violent” dipped to 18 percent from 26 percent in December 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. More than half of independents and about three-quarters of Democrats, on the other hand, believe the protesters were “mostly violent,” numbers that have remained largely unchanged over time, the poll found.
The percentage of Republicans who hold Trump responsible for the attack dropped from 27 percent to 14 percent, compared with 56 percent of independents and 86 percent of Democrats. More than a third of Republicans said they believe the FBI definitely or probably organized and encouraged the attack — a conclusion contradicted by an extensive congressional investigation and more than 725 completed federal prosecutions.
More than 1,000 people have been charged in the Capitol breach. The Post-UMD poll found a majority of Americans believe the events of Jan. 6 were an attack on democracy and should never be forgotten. Trump faces his own criminal prosecution in Washington and Georgia for his efforts to overturn the election, trials his advisers have tried to delay — and fear could alienate him from voters he needs in a general election.
“When I resigned on Jan. 6, if you would have told me that people would have been whitewashing the events of the day or spreading all kinds of conspiracy theories, I would not have believed you,” said Sarah Matthews, who was a deputy press secretary in Trump’s White House. “We all saw the footage. We saw these people violently attacking police officers. To whitewash and downplay the events is so frustrating because if they took place in any other country, we would be calling it a coup attempt.”
Given the total bullshit that Trump spreads every day, plus the specific bullshit known as Lost Cause, I don't know how anybody would be surprised. Frustrated sure - but not surprised.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung accused Biden of trying to distract from his record and criticized him for the prosecutions of Trump. “The fact is that Biden is the real threat to democracy by weaponizing the government to go after his main political opponent and interfering in the 2024 election,” he said.
(The federal charges against Trump were brought by special counsel Jack Smith in accordance with Justice Department rules against White House influence. There is no evidence of coordination with the two cases brought by local prosecutors.)
Trump is holding two rallies in Iowa on Saturday ahead of the caucuses there Jan. 15. His remarks are expected to focus on contrasting his and Biden’s records on the economy and immigration, and it is not clear if he will mention the anniversary.
Biden confronted the subject head-on Friday in a speech in Pennsylvania, near the Revolutionary War campground at Valley Forge. His reelection campaign is preparing to frame the likely general-election rematch as a choice between democracy and authoritarianism.
“When the attack on Jan. 6 happened, there was no doubt about the truth,” he said. “As time has gone on, politics, fear, money all have intervened. And now these MAGA voices who know the truth about Trump and Jan. 6 have abandoned the truth and abandoned democracy. They made their choice. Now the rest of us — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we have to make our choice.”
(11:01 is where Biden says Trump is a sick fuck)
A thought: the 1,200 MAGA thugs arrested and charged with various crimes on Jan6 are basically acting as human shields for Trump. Because, as always, the people up front in the trenches take the pounding while REMFs like Trump hang back, waiting to take credit if the plan works, or duck responsibility and target blame onto everybody else if it doesn't.
In a speech Friday night, Trump accused Biden of “pathetic fearmongering.”
‘Outlier … conspiracy theorist or whack job’
Congress was still meeting through the night to certify the electoral college results as the thousands of Trump supporters who’d gathered on the National Mall started leaving Washington and returning home. Though disappointed that they hadn’t ultimately changed the outcome of the election, many of the demonstrators were still thrilled by what they’d experienced. They texted friends and posted on Facebook about what they’d seen, often reporting joyful scenes and, for those who never approached the Capitol steps, no sign of violence.
Some participants speculated that the violence could have been instigating by anti-Trump interlopers. Others spoke up to refute those suspicions: They were proud to claim responsibility for what they had done. Then some of those self-incriminating social media posts started showing up in warrants and indictments. The FBI posted wanted photos of people in the mob, and amateur online sleuths started hunting them down. Others were turned in by family members and co-workers.
The Jan. 17 arrest of Couy Griffin, a New Mexico county commissioner known in the Make America Great Again movement as the founder of Cowboys for Trump, caught the attention of Julie Kelly, a writer for the pro-Trump website American Greatness. Griffin was charged with entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct.
Because there was no evidence that Griffin assaulted police officers or damaged property, Kelly questioned why he was detained. “His real crime, of course, is that he’s a supporter of Donald Trump,” she wrote on Feb. 4, 2021. “He is, for all intents and purposes, a political prisoner.”
Griffin was released on bond the next day. He was later convicted and sentenced to 14 days, which he’d already served.
“I was being considered an outlier, to put it nicely,” Kelly said in an interview. “Conspiracy theorist or whack job, to put it more accurately, how I was portrayed.”
At that time, even Trump was still denouncing the violence. In a Feb. 28 Fox News interview, he defended his rally before the riot as “a love fest,” but as for the siege of the Capitol, he said, “I hate to see it. I think it’s terrible.”
The biggest exception was Tucker Carlson, then the host of the nation’s most-watched cable news show, on Fox News. In March, he invited Kelly on to question what caused the death of Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who died the day after fighting the mob, including being attacked with bear spray. (The D.C. medical examiner later concluded that Sicknick died of natural causes after two strokes, but that “all that transpired on that day played a role in his condition.” Sicknick’s assailant, Julian Khater, pleaded guilty in 2022.)
“The details of that day matter, Carlson said, “because they’re being used as a pretext for changing this country.” Carlson did not respond to requests for comment.
Carlson also took an interest in another fatality connected to the attack: that of Ashli Babbitt, the Trump supporter who was shot trying to enter the lobby of the House chamber while lawmakers were evacuating. In the months after the riot, far-right communities online started portraying her as a martyr and trying to identify and harass the officer who shot her, according to Holt’s research for the Atlantic Council.
In June, Carlson brought on Babbitt’s widower, who repeated the call to identify the officer who killed her. “The silence is deafening,” he said.
Babbitt’s mother, Micki Witthoeft, started holding a nightly vigil outside the D.C. jail where Jan. 6 defendants were being held, either while being arraigned, awaiting sentencing after conviction, or because a judge found them too dangerous to release before trial. The inmates started a tradition of singing the national anthem every night at 9.
One of the defendants in the jail was Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist from New Jersey who gained notoriety for wearing a Hitler-style mustache. He was charged and later convicted of charges including obstruction of an official proceeding, and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.
His aunt, Cynthia Hughes, asked the judge to release Hale-Cusanelli pending trial, arguing that he wasn’t dangerous. The judge, Trump appointee Trevor McFadden, disagreed and denied bond. Hughes started a fund called the Patriot Freedom Project to raise money for the lawyers and families of Jan. 6 defendants. Hughes declined to comment.
One night that summer, Kelly was standing in her kitchen in suburban Chicago when she got a call from the jail. She used her daughter’s cellphone to record the prisoners singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” then posted it online. “That started to get attention,” Kelly said.
‘It came from the grass roots’
That spring, the pressure from activists and right-wing media started getting back to Congress.
At first, the main voice was Gosar (R-Ariz.), who had appeared at “Stop the Steal” rallies leading up to Jan. 6. In the months after, Gosar used his time at congressional hearings to question former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen about Babbitt’s death, claiming she was “executed,” demanding that FBI Director Christopher A. Wray identify the officer who shot her, and falsely insisting that there were “zero” firearms among the mob.
Witthoeft said in an interview that when she began approaching members of Congress about her daughter, Gosar was the only one who would meet. “One of my first meetings, I was told by a staffer that Jan. 6 was a political football that no one wanted to touch,” she said.
But other lawmakers soon started getting involved. In May, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), who on Jan. 6 helped barricade the doors of the House chamber, spoke at a hearing to deny there ever was an insurrection and suggested the rampaging mob looked like “a normal tourist visit.” Greene (R-Ga.) and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) tried to visit the Jan. 6 defendants in the D.C. jail. They were turned away.
“It came from the grass roots,” said a former senior House Republican leadership aide. The aide said most Republicans who had been at the Capitol “knew exactly what happened, knew how wrong it was, and knew that Donald Trump was responsible” but shifted after hearing from constituents.
Over time, about a dozen members of Congress became reliable allies, said Witthoeft, who said she began to regularly talk to congressional staff members, along with activists, documentary filmmakers and others. “People do return our phone calls now, people will open our doors and take meetings with us,” she said.
By mid-2021, online rumors accusing left-wing agitators of instigating the Capitol riot had fizzled out. In their place, Darren Beattie, a former speechwriter for Gaetz and the Trump White House who’d gone on to found a pro-Trump website called Revolver News, started publishing articles suggested a different source of subterfuge: the FBI.
Beattie focused on a man named Ray Epps, who appeared in videos urging on the mob and whom Beattie suspected of being an undercover operative. Justice Department leaders have repeatedly confirmed that Epps never worked for or with them. In 2023, Epps pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct.
Beattie was a frequent guest on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, one of the most influential talk shows in the MAGA movement. In June 2021, he found an even bigger audience on Carlson’s show. (Epps is now suing Fox News, alleging defamation.) Clips from the show were shared online by Greene and Gaetz, and Gosar read one of Beattie’s articles into the official congressional record.
“It took the media by storm,” Beattie said in an interview.
Carlson followed up in November with “Patriot Purge,” a multipart movie on Fox News’s streaming arm that drew on Beattie’s work and other unsubstantiated allegations to portray the riot as a staged feint to discredit Trump and his supporters. Two longtime Fox News commentators, Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes, quit the network in protest. The network stood by Carlson at the time. (He was abruptly terminated in 2023.)
By the time Congress marked the attack’s first anniversary, Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) was the only Republican who attended a moment of silence on the House floor. Gaetz and Greene held their own news conference where Gaetz promoted Beattie’s “fed-surrection” claims.
That night on Carlson’s show, the host pressured Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) to walk back his description of Jan. 6 as “a violent terrorist attack” during a Senate hearing the day before.
“By no definition was it a terror attack, that’s a lie,” Carlson told Cruz, who had been one of the leading lawmakers trying to block the 2020 election results in Congress.
Cruz maintained that he was referring to people who attacked police officers, not other protesters. “That being said, Tucker, I agree with you, it was a mistake to say that,” Cruz said.
‘He became more engaged’
In June 2021, one of Trump’s assistants called Witthoeft, Babbitt’s mother. “Would I want a call from the president?” Witthoeft recalled the assistant asking.
A week later, Trump called. During the 30-minute conversation, Witthoeft said, Trump acknowledged that her daughter died in support of him and was complimentary of Babbitt. Witthoeft said she pushed Trump to talk more about what she termed “the political prisoners” of Jan. 6 — people who were being held in detention after being charged with crimes.
While Witthoeft described Trump as a “real gentleman,” she said he had been slow in the early days of 2021 to embrace the issue. She said she asked the president to keep saying her daughter’s name. “I think President Trump was a good leader. But he’s one man,” she said. “For everyone to wait for him to save the day, the past three years could have been better spent.”
After that call, Trump became increasingly defiant in his defenses of Jan. 6. In July, he joined calls to identify the officer who shot Babbitt and described her in a Fox News interview as “innocent.” He said the defendants were being treated unfairly and repeated the falsehood that there were no guns at the riot. In October, he recorded a video message to mark Babbitt’s birthday, calling her a “truly incredible person” whose memory would live on “for all time.”
Trump’s escalating identification with the cause of Jan. 6 defendants coincided with his own deepening criminal jeopardy — and his moves toward a new presidential campaign. In August 2021, the FBI conducted a court-approved search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida to recover classified documents improperly taken from the White House. Trump began portraying the investigation as politically targeted, in step with the Jan. 6 defendants, for whom he adopted Kelly’s term — “political prisoners.”
Later that month, Trump met at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., with Kelly and Hughes, the Patriot Freedom Project founder. Kelly recalled she told Trump that his supporters frequently said to her: “We were there for him on Jan. 6. Where is he for us?”
Trump asked how he could help, she said. She pointed to Hughes, who was raising money for the defendants and their families. “From that point on he became more engaged,” Kelly said.
Trump also renewed attacks against Mike Pence, his vice president, who had refused to help Trump overturn the election on Jan. 6. In the days after the attack, Trump had expressed what Pence thought was genuine contrition over the attack, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. For months, the two men occasionally spoke, and Trump even invited Pence to come see him at Mar-a-Lago. But with Trump’s shift, the former vice president grew frustrated and resigned to what he saw as the futility of the relationship. Now, the two men haven’t spoken in years, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private interactions.
In January 2022, Trump first floated pardoning Jan. 6 defendants. His rallies for that year’s midterms featured a video showing clips from Carlson and other right-wing media hosts repeating the conspiracy theories suggesting the attack on the Capitol was staged. He also gave an extended interview to Beattie.
“You’re right about Epps,” Trump told him of the man Beattie falsely accused of being an undercover operative.
At a September 2022 rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., he recognized Hughes to stand and be applauded. “What a job,” he said. “We all appreciate it.” Trump also recorded a video message that was played at a fundraiser for Hughes’s group.
That month, he also called into the nightly vigil outside the D.C. jail. “I just want to tell everybody that’s listening, we’re with you,” he said.
In early 2023, Trump allies began producing a track of the inmates singing the national anthem, mixed with a recording of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. He played the finished song — “Justice for All,” featuring the “J6 Prison Choir” — to open the first campaign rally of his 2024 campaign, in Waco, Tex., in March 2023. The song jumped to No. 1 on iTunes.
The next month, Trump dropped into a diner while campaigning in Manchester, N.H. The crowd inside started calling out that there was a “J6er” present. She was Micki Larson-Olson, who had been recently released after serving a 180-day sentence for unlawful entry onto public property. Trump called her over, hugged her and signed the backpack she said she was wearing that day.
By May, Trump expanded his pardon pledge, now promising to “most likely” grant clemency to “a large portion” of Jan. 6 defendants. “And it’ll be very early on,” he said in a CNN town hall.
At a rally in Durham, N.H., last month, he went further than Kelly’s phrase for the Jan. 6 defendants.
“I don’t call them prisoners,” he said. “I call them hostages. They’re hostages.”
Will SCOTUS Step Up?
Jennifer Rubin
You can bet on the Supreme Court’s abject partisanship
Happy new year! To start us off in 2024, I will look at the Supreme Court’s constitutional conundrum, pick the distinguished person of the week and share my thoughts on two movies.
What caught my eye
Happy new year! To start us off in 2024, I will look at the Supreme Court’s constitutional conundrum, pick the distinguished person of the week and share my thoughts on two movies.
What caught my eye
By any objective reading of the Constitution, four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump should be disqualified from holding office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court will have a hard time reversing the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision applying Section 3, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
The president is undoubtedly an “officer” under Section 3. (That the word “officer” is used to refer to subordinate appointees in the appointments clause in the body of the Constitution is utterly irrelevant to its use more than 150 years later to protect the Union from former Confederates.) In any event, the phrase “hold any office” sweeps in the presidency. (As the Colorado Supreme Court noted: “The Constitution refers to the Presidency as an ‘Office’ twenty-five times.”)
The Colorado court’s evidentiary hearing also confirmed that Trump had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same [the Constitution], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Its exacting discussion on pages 97-103 of its ruling reiterated that “the record amply established that the events of January 6 constituted a concerted and public use of force or threat of force by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Under any viable definition, this constituted an insurrection.”
In addition, contrary to Trump apologists, there is no requirement in the text requiring a conviction before the disqualification. Had the framers intended to make that a precondition, they surely would have said so. (The conviction of former Confederates was not a required under Section 3.)
And finally, arguments that the 14th Amendment is not “self-executing” (i.e., requiring an act of Congress) are plain wrong. Individuals routinely bring suits directly under the due-process and equal-protection clauses of Section 1. As with Section 1, Congress may write enforcement legislation for Section 3, but none is necessary.
An honest originalist would be compelled to agree with the Colorado Supreme Court. Our democracy disallows certain candidates for president — e.g., foreign-born people, insurrectionists. As constitutional scholar Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I have got a colleague who’s a great young politician, Maxwell Frost. He’s 26. He can’t run for president. Now, would we say that that’s undemocratic? Well, that’s the rules of the Constitution. If you don’t like the rules of the Constitution, change the Constitution.” If the Constitution is to mean anything, originalists tell us, its text must be followed even if the outcome is politically dicey. (Certainly, allowing an insurrectionist back on the ballot to do it again would be more problematic.)
And yet, few expect the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority, so profoundly lacking in credibility, to follow Section 3’s clear mandate, any more than they expect Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself, given his wife’s alleged involvement in the coup plot. How, then, do the justices get out of doing what the Constitution says they must?
First, the Supreme Court could concoct some novel definition of “insurrection” so it can categorize the attempted coup as something less than the “insurrection” Section 3 requires. Despite the Colorado court’s ample historical research demonstrating that Trump’s action fits squarely within the word’s meaning, the right-wing justices could simply make up a new definition. I would not put it past them.
Second, the court could duck the case on the grounds that it lacks jurisdiction to contravene a state’s ruling on qualifications for a primary, essentially putting off a decision until Trump becomes the Republican nominee. That said, very few court watchers expect the majority would countenance a hodgepodge of conflicting rulings, with some states allowing him on the ballot and others not. (By the way, unleashing utter chaos among states is precisely what the court did on abortion, but this court is no model of consistency.)
Finally, a related argument would be that states alone have the duty to determine qualifications. The only federal role comes when Congress can challenge electors. “Under Article II, Section 1, each state is authorized to appoint presidential electors ‘in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct,’” Colorado’s Supreme Court noted. “Absent a separate constitutional constraint, then, states may exercise their plenary appointment power to limit presidential ballot access to those candidates who are constitutionally qualified to hold the office of President.” Those enamored with the (rejected) independent state legislature doctrine might agree, but I suspect this partisan majority will not allow any state to exclude Trump from the ballot.
Bottom line:
The partisan majority on the court could duck the question, deeming it premature or a matter for the states, thereby enraging their right-wing patrons, though that is highly unlikely. Alternatively, it could fashion a definition of insurrection to suit its purposes or blatantly defy Section 3’s clear language (e.g., invent a requirement for a criminal conviction). Right-wing justices’ contortions will confirm the utter lack of credibility that now defines the court.
- more -
Jan 5, 2024
SCOTUS Takes A Hand
Let's just say the Roberts Court will probably be looking to carve this thing down to the sliveriest sliver that anybody ever saw.
Did you ever play Mumbly Peg with a guy who was bound and determined to make you eat dirt? Yeah - kinda like that.
Conventional wisdom says Roberts has to protect the court's already-damaged public image. And maybe that's what carries the day, and we'll get a ruling that's "true to the Originalist view". Which means the 14th amendment stands as written, and Trump can't be president.
That's what makes the most sense to me. The trial court in Colorado found, on the facts, that Trump did engage in an insurrection, and left it to the CO Supreme Court (which affirmed the lower court's finding as to the facts) to decide on the law - that Section 3 of A14 means Trump can't be on the ballot.
My first guess is that they'll weasel their way into a 5-4 decision that "let's the voters decide".
I think Roberts would have to be that 4th vote on the dissenting side, which would pretty much tar him permanently as a Chief Justice In Name Only.
The Supreme Court said Friday it will decide whether former President Donald Trump’s name can appear on primary-election ballots, a case that ensures the justices will play a central role in shaping this year’s presidential election.
The decision to review the case from Colorado at oral argument in early February comes after that state’s top court disqualified the Republican frontrunner, finding Trump engaged in an insurrection before and during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Friday’s announcement puts the justices in a pivotal, potentially uncomfortable position with echoes of the court’s involvement in the 2000 election when its decision assured victory for President George W. Bush, polarized the nation and damaged the court’s reputation as an independent institution.
The court’s brief order scheduled oral argument for Feb. 8, and came the day before the third anniversary of the Capitol riot.
Legal scholars and state election officials have urged the court to quickly settle the question of Trump’s eligibility as a candidate and to ensure all states follow the same policy ahead of this year’s primary voting. Trump holds a wide lead over other Republican contenders, with the Iowa caucus less than two weeks away and state primaries starting Jan. 23.
The Colorado decision was the first time a court found a presidential candidate could be barred from the ballot because of a provision of the post-Civil War 14th Amendment. The provision prevents insurrectionists from holding office and was designed to keep Confederates from returning to power.
Aye there's the rub - the Thomas/Alito faction could bail on a "traditional originalist view" (I don't know what the fuck that might means, I just made it up - you think any of this is following any kinda logical pattern?).
Anyway, they push it all the way down to a decision not to make a decision, because the original intent of the authors of A14 was to bar Confederates from returning to Congress. It had nothing to do with a sitting POTUS. It doesn't apply.
Hey - ya heard it here first.
Similar arguments have been made to keep Trump off the ballot elsewhere. While those challenges have failed in some states, like Michigan and Minnesota, they are pending in Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts and elsewhere. Maine’s top election official last month barred Trump from that state’s ballot, an order Trump has appealed in state court.
Both Colorado and Maine temporarily put their decisions to bar Trump as a candidate on hold, meaning the former president’s name will stay on the primary ballots until the legal issues are resolved. Colorado and Maine hold primaries on March 5, but ballots are printed — and mailed to military and overseas voters — weeks before then.
The public already views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, with Democrats expressing little confidence in the court and Republicans saying the opposite, and the question of whether Trump should be kept off the ballot has the potential to further polarize those views.
“It throws them right into the political thicket,” Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell said of the court. “There is no way they can decide the case without having about half the country think they are being partisan hacks.”
In part for that reason, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., an ardent institutionalist, is likely to look for consensus through a narrow ruling that seeks unanimity or avoids a partisan split on a court with a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three justices nominated by Trump.
Constitutional scholars are divided on whether it would be good for democracy to bar Trump from the ballot, or whether such a move, even if legally sound, is politically too dangerous. Many of them say they expect the justices to try to find a way to decide the case without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump engaged in insurrection.
The justices have several paths to resolve the case in a way that keeps Trump’s name on the ballot without dealing with the question of insurrection.
In urging the justices to invalidate the Colorado decision, and give voters the opportunity to select the candidate of their choosing, the former president’s lawyers and the Colorado Republican Party have made multiple arguments. States, they say, have no authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment without the passage of federal legislation. They also contend that Section 3 applies to those who took oaths to serve in Congress or a state legislature, but not to serve as president. In addition, Trump’s lawyers say he did not engage in an insurrection.
If a majority of justices agree with Trump on any one of those arguments, the court could allow the former president’s name to remain on the ballot.
Attorneys for the six Colorado voters who challenged Trump’s eligibility have said the Constitution’s language barring insurrectionists from office is clear; that it applies to presidents; and does not require an act of Congress to be enforced. They urged the justices in a filing Thursday to abide by the finding from Colorado’s top court that the former president intentionally incited his supporters to violence on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification of the election — and exacerbated the attack while it was ongoing.
Of the nine sitting justices, only Justice Clarence Thomas was on the bench when the court issued its 2000 decision about the vote count in Florida in Bush v. Gore. But his colleagues are certainly mindful of the lasting impact the ruling had on the court’s image.
Years after she retired, the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, for one, expressed misgivings that the court had gotten involved in the case, acknowledging the ruling “gave the court a less than perfect reputation.”
“No doubt they have learned some lessons from that," said McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge. “They do not want to be in a position where they look like they’ve decided an American election.”
Both Colorado and Maine temporarily put their decisions to bar Trump as a candidate on hold, meaning the former president’s name will stay on the primary ballots until the legal issues are resolved. Colorado and Maine hold primaries on March 5, but ballots are printed — and mailed to military and overseas voters — weeks before then.
The public already views the Supreme Court through a partisan lens, with Democrats expressing little confidence in the court and Republicans saying the opposite, and the question of whether Trump should be kept off the ballot has the potential to further polarize those views.
“It throws them right into the political thicket,” Stanford law professor Michael W. McConnell said of the court. “There is no way they can decide the case without having about half the country think they are being partisan hacks.”
In part for that reason, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., an ardent institutionalist, is likely to look for consensus through a narrow ruling that seeks unanimity or avoids a partisan split on a court with a 6-3 conservative majority that includes three justices nominated by Trump.
Constitutional scholars are divided on whether it would be good for democracy to bar Trump from the ballot, or whether such a move, even if legally sound, is politically too dangerous. Many of them say they expect the justices to try to find a way to decide the case without addressing the underlying question of whether Trump engaged in insurrection.
The justices have several paths to resolve the case in a way that keeps Trump’s name on the ballot without dealing with the question of insurrection.
In urging the justices to invalidate the Colorado decision, and give voters the opportunity to select the candidate of their choosing, the former president’s lawyers and the Colorado Republican Party have made multiple arguments. States, they say, have no authority to enforce Section 3 of the 14th Amendment without the passage of federal legislation. They also contend that Section 3 applies to those who took oaths to serve in Congress or a state legislature, but not to serve as president. In addition, Trump’s lawyers say he did not engage in an insurrection.
If a majority of justices agree with Trump on any one of those arguments, the court could allow the former president’s name to remain on the ballot.
Attorneys for the six Colorado voters who challenged Trump’s eligibility have said the Constitution’s language barring insurrectionists from office is clear; that it applies to presidents; and does not require an act of Congress to be enforced. They urged the justices in a filing Thursday to abide by the finding from Colorado’s top court that the former president intentionally incited his supporters to violence on Jan. 6, 2021, to disrupt the certification of the election — and exacerbated the attack while it was ongoing.
Of the nine sitting justices, only Justice Clarence Thomas was on the bench when the court issued its 2000 decision about the vote count in Florida in Bush v. Gore. But his colleagues are certainly mindful of the lasting impact the ruling had on the court’s image.
Years after she retired, the late Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, for one, expressed misgivings that the court had gotten involved in the case, acknowledging the ruling “gave the court a less than perfect reputation.”
“No doubt they have learned some lessons from that," said McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge. “They do not want to be in a position where they look like they’ve decided an American election.”
What Do They Mean?
I think I know the answer to my question, but sometimes, like an idiot goat trying to get somebody to explain a typewriter to him, I find myself trying to make sense of something that isn't meant to make sense to me or anybody else.
Shutting down the borders is a pretty classic Daddy State type move. And when you can couple it with some good old-fashioned racial scapegoating - hey - why not?
They have yet to articulate what exactly "shutting down the border" would look like. What does Mike Johnson mean as he calls for "... transformational policy change to secure our border, enforce our laws, and deter even more illegal immigration"?
I'm afraid it's not a big stretch to think it means machine guns, razor wire, and land mines.
And let's remember that a closed border serves to keep people in too.
Border dispute could force partial government shutdown
Far-right House Republicans are threatening to block legislation to keep the federal government operating without sweeping changes to immigration laws
Far-right Republicans in the House are threatening to force a partial government shutdown unless Congress enacts strict new changes to immigration law, imperiling crucial government services — and U.S. aid to Ukraine — over a long-fraught issue that could be critical in this year’s elections.
Dozens of GOP lawmakers toured a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Tex., on Wednesday to push House-passed legislation that would significantly limit migrants’ ability to claim asylum, restart construction of a border wall and cut into President Biden’s power to grant humanitarian parole to migrants. Members of the Republican conference’s most conservative flank demanded that legislation become law in exchange for their votes to approve federal spending for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, though the GOP-led House already rejected such a trade in September.
“H. R. 2 needs to be the unflinching House policy because all of it’s important to securing the border,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the archconservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Post. “The president and Senate majority leader have no interest in securing the border, and so therefore, we as a House majority should say, ‘We’re not going to fund a government that is going to continue to facilitate this border invasion.’”
Federal agents recorded nearly 250,000 illegal crossings along the southern border in December, the highest total ever in one month, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Post.
That crisis is complicating efforts in Washington to head off a partial shutdown. Funding for roughly 20 percent of the federal government — including for essential programs such as some veterans assistance and food and drug safety services — expires on Jan. 19, and money for the rest of the government runs out shortly after that, on Feb. 2. But lawmakers have not yet agreed on how to pass full-year spending bills or more temporary funding. Without action by the first deadline, a partial government shutdown would begin. Congress returns next week with little time to work out the details.
The White House’s top budget official told reporters Friday that the GOP tactic significantly increased the risk of a shutdown.
“I wouldn’t say pessimistic, but I’m not optimistic [about the odds to avert a shutdown],” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “Earlier this week, their border trip left me with more concerns about where they’re headed.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not formally back the demands to link immigration restrictions with federal spending, but with a narrow GOP majority in a bitterly divided chamber, he relies on the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been a persistent thorn in the side of Republican leadership, to maintain power. He called that immigration bill, H.R. 2, a “necessary ingredient” to any immigration policy.
“Let me tell you what our top two priorities are right now,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “In summary, we want to get the border closed and secured first, and we want to make sure that we reduce nondefense discretionary spending.”
Republican lawmakers and political operatives say immigration issues work to their advantage, and hope to capitalize on the porous border to maintain control of their narrow House majority, retake the Senate and propel former president Donald Trump back to the White House.
“I would prefer the Senate Democrats found enlightenment and said, ‘H.R. 2 is what we want to do.’ Turns out I live in the real world and that’s not going to happen,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said. “But if we can get a substantial win on the border, I think it is one of those rare cases where it actually really helps the country and helps us politically.”
That strategy has at least some support in the Senate, where Democrats control the chamber by a single vote, requiring help from Republicans to get around potential filibusters to pass new spending legislation.
“I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a regular interlocutor between hard-right lawmakers in the House and more pragmatic Senate Republicans, told The Post on Friday. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.
A bipartisan group in the Senate — Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) — has been negotiating border legislation for weeks in connection with a separate spending bill that would devote more than $100 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel and to the U.S.-Mexico border, among other priorities. That bill would include $14 billion in border security provisions. Senate Republicans have demanded immigration policy changes, as well as the security funding, before they’d vote to approve additional money for Ukraine.
But House Republicans are far more skeptical of Kyiv than their Senate counterparts, and demands to link immigration policy to ongoing government funding, instead of to the Ukraine aid, could mean the House won’t pass any assistance for the war in Ukraine.
This round of budgetary negotiations wasn’t supposed to be so complicated. In the spring, President Biden struck a deal with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to suspend the nation’s debt limit in exchange for limiting discretionary spending to $1.59 trillion in 2024, with 1 percent growth in 2025. Because that represented a cut when taking inflation into account, Biden and McCarthy agreed to spend another $69 billion each year in a side deal, with some of that offset by repurposing existing funds.
But House Republicans, led by members of the Freedom Caucus, were unsatisfied with that arrangement. A few months later, they ousted McCarthy from the speakership when he turned to Democratic votes in September to maintain those spending levels and avert a government shutdown. In a sign of stark internal divisions, though, the GOP-led House also rejected a stopgap funding measure with steep budget cuts that included the sweeping border changes the far right now seeks. (McCarthy resigned from Congress at the end of 2023.)
After taking over as speaker, Johnson in November also needed support from Democrats to pass another stopgap funding bill, which staggered expiration dates between Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.
The $69 billion side deal that McCarthy struck has been a sticking point through the fall and winter. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), then chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters just after Thanksgiving that his group would support the $1.59 trillion spending total that the debt ceiling law set — even though that was the amount that led some members to boot McCarthy from the speakership and drive the government to the verge of a shutdown — but only if it didn’t include the side agreements.
By early December, Johnson echoed the sentiment, declaring that the additional funding was not codified in law, but merely a handshake deal between his predecessor and Biden.
“This budget agreement was not a handshake agreement,” Young, from the White House OMB, said Friday. “It was a vote of Congress. It is not optional. They have to keep their word.”
“That group has got sway over Johnson. They’ve toppled McCarthy. They’re the reason why nothing’s got done in the last 12 months,” Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told The Post.
Good, the Freedom Caucus’s new leader, said he has told Johnson that the speaker would “be a hero to the American people” if he threatened a government shutdown over border security.
“I think that’s a fight the American people will reward Speaker Johnson for waging,” Good said.
Far-right House Republicans are threatening to block legislation to keep the federal government operating without sweeping changes to immigration laws
Far-right Republicans in the House are threatening to force a partial government shutdown unless Congress enacts strict new changes to immigration law, imperiling crucial government services — and U.S. aid to Ukraine — over a long-fraught issue that could be critical in this year’s elections.
Dozens of GOP lawmakers toured a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border at Eagle Pass, Tex., on Wednesday to push House-passed legislation that would significantly limit migrants’ ability to claim asylum, restart construction of a border wall and cut into President Biden’s power to grant humanitarian parole to migrants. Members of the Republican conference’s most conservative flank demanded that legislation become law in exchange for their votes to approve federal spending for the rest of the 2024 fiscal year, though the GOP-led House already rejected such a trade in September.
“H. R. 2 needs to be the unflinching House policy because all of it’s important to securing the border,” Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), chair of the archconservative House Freedom Caucus, told The Washington Post. “The president and Senate majority leader have no interest in securing the border, and so therefore, we as a House majority should say, ‘We’re not going to fund a government that is going to continue to facilitate this border invasion.’”
Federal agents recorded nearly 250,000 illegal crossings along the southern border in December, the highest total ever in one month, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data obtained by The Post.
That crisis is complicating efforts in Washington to head off a partial shutdown. Funding for roughly 20 percent of the federal government — including for essential programs such as some veterans assistance and food and drug safety services — expires on Jan. 19, and money for the rest of the government runs out shortly after that, on Feb. 2. But lawmakers have not yet agreed on how to pass full-year spending bills or more temporary funding. Without action by the first deadline, a partial government shutdown would begin. Congress returns next week with little time to work out the details.
The White House’s top budget official told reporters Friday that the GOP tactic significantly increased the risk of a shutdown.
“I wouldn’t say pessimistic, but I’m not optimistic [about the odds to avert a shutdown],” Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. “Earlier this week, their border trip left me with more concerns about where they’re headed.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) did not formally back the demands to link immigration restrictions with federal spending, but with a narrow GOP majority in a bitterly divided chamber, he relies on the Freedom Caucus, a group that has been a persistent thorn in the side of Republican leadership, to maintain power. He called that immigration bill, H.R. 2, a “necessary ingredient” to any immigration policy.
“Let me tell you what our top two priorities are right now,” Johnson told reporters Wednesday. “In summary, we want to get the border closed and secured first, and we want to make sure that we reduce nondefense discretionary spending.”
Republican lawmakers and political operatives say immigration issues work to their advantage, and hope to capitalize on the porous border to maintain control of their narrow House majority, retake the Senate and propel former president Donald Trump back to the White House.
“I would prefer the Senate Democrats found enlightenment and said, ‘H.R. 2 is what we want to do.’ Turns out I live in the real world and that’s not going to happen,” Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) said. “But if we can get a substantial win on the border, I think it is one of those rare cases where it actually really helps the country and helps us politically.”
That strategy has at least some support in the Senate, where Democrats control the chamber by a single vote, requiring help from Republicans to get around potential filibusters to pass new spending legislation.
“I think that we have a real fiscal crisis in our country, but I think the most significant crisis we have is what is going on at the southern border,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), a regular interlocutor between hard-right lawmakers in the House and more pragmatic Senate Republicans, told The Post on Friday. “And I encourage my Republican friends in the House to use all the negotiating leverage they can to solve this problem politically.
A bipartisan group in the Senate — Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) — has been negotiating border legislation for weeks in connection with a separate spending bill that would devote more than $100 billion in U.S. aid to Ukraine and Israel and to the U.S.-Mexico border, among other priorities. That bill would include $14 billion in border security provisions. Senate Republicans have demanded immigration policy changes, as well as the security funding, before they’d vote to approve additional money for Ukraine.
But House Republicans are far more skeptical of Kyiv than their Senate counterparts, and demands to link immigration policy to ongoing government funding, instead of to the Ukraine aid, could mean the House won’t pass any assistance for the war in Ukraine.
This round of budgetary negotiations wasn’t supposed to be so complicated. In the spring, President Biden struck a deal with then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to suspend the nation’s debt limit in exchange for limiting discretionary spending to $1.59 trillion in 2024, with 1 percent growth in 2025. Because that represented a cut when taking inflation into account, Biden and McCarthy agreed to spend another $69 billion each year in a side deal, with some of that offset by repurposing existing funds.
But House Republicans, led by members of the Freedom Caucus, were unsatisfied with that arrangement. A few months later, they ousted McCarthy from the speakership when he turned to Democratic votes in September to maintain those spending levels and avert a government shutdown. In a sign of stark internal divisions, though, the GOP-led House also rejected a stopgap funding measure with steep budget cuts that included the sweeping border changes the far right now seeks. (McCarthy resigned from Congress at the end of 2023.)
After taking over as speaker, Johnson in November also needed support from Democrats to pass another stopgap funding bill, which staggered expiration dates between Jan. 19 and Feb. 2.
The $69 billion side deal that McCarthy struck has been a sticking point through the fall and winter. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), then chair of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters just after Thanksgiving that his group would support the $1.59 trillion spending total that the debt ceiling law set — even though that was the amount that led some members to boot McCarthy from the speakership and drive the government to the verge of a shutdown — but only if it didn’t include the side agreements.
By early December, Johnson echoed the sentiment, declaring that the additional funding was not codified in law, but merely a handshake deal between his predecessor and Biden.
“This budget agreement was not a handshake agreement,” Young, from the White House OMB, said Friday. “It was a vote of Congress. It is not optional. They have to keep their word.”
“That group has got sway over Johnson. They’ve toppled McCarthy. They’re the reason why nothing’s got done in the last 12 months,” Rep. David Trone (D-Md.), a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told The Post.
Good, the Freedom Caucus’s new leader, said he has told Johnson that the speaker would “be a hero to the American people” if he threatened a government shutdown over border security.
“I think that’s a fight the American people will reward Speaker Johnson for waging,” Good said.
Runnin' Like A Scalded Dog
Speculate away, good people. Here's mine:
I think the prick is finally being booted - not because he's been livin' large and gettin' fat on the company dime, but because he's attracted too much of the wrong kind of attention, and the organization may be facing some pretty bad shit - like charges of laundering Russian mob money, and then maybe funneling some of it into American politics.
Dunno - but there's been something wrong with the way that bunch does business for a long time.
NRA chief Wayne LaPierre announces resignation
Longtime National Rifle Association chief executive Wayne LaPierre, facing a lawsuit in New York that sought to remove him from his post, announced his resignation from the organization Friday.
LaPierre is named as one of four defendants in a lawsuit over alleged fraud filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Last week a state appeals court ruled the suit could move forward, denying a request from the NRA to end the probe.
LaPierre cited health reasons in his decision, which was accepted by the NRA board of directors at a Friday meeting, according to a news release from the organization. In the statement, LaPierre said he would “never stop supporting the NRA.”
Andrew Arulanandam, the organization’s head of general operations, will become the interim chief executive and executive vice president, the news release said.
Today's Keith
"...where the rule of law will be erased, and replaced by the rule of threat, and coercion, and quid pro quo."
SERIES 2 EPISODE 101: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN
TRUMP SUPREME COURT THREATS CONTINUE; NOW AGAINST KAVANAUGH - 1.5.24
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:
TRUMP SUPREME COURT THREATS CONTINUE; NOW AGAINST KAVANAUGH - 1.5.24
A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT:
For the second time in as many days and the fourth time in one week, Trump has gotten the message out to the Justices of the Supreme Court - and especially the three he appointed - that they’d better rule in favor of Trump in the 14th Amendment and Presidential Immunity cases because he put them there.
Attorney Alina Habba did it again, again on Fox. Wednesday it was in the afternoon; last night it was in prime time. The message is loud and clear, and God knows with the utter corruption of the conservatives on THIS court you could never convict anybody of doing anything, but this is either an illegal threat AGAINST Justice Brett Kavanaugh and others, or it is the back half of an illegal quid pro quo. Habba said she "had faith" in "people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place. He'll step up."
A week ago today Maggie Haberman went on CNN and said Trump feared SCOTUS might rule against him because it was trying to look balanced. On Tuesday, his first simpleton attorney Christina Bobb said that any ruling - even one declaring that Trump was guilty of insurrection - would be irrelevant if the people wanted Trump as their ruler. Wednesday, Habba insisted that "Republicans" (she meant Supreme Court Justices) "unfortunately sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even if the law’s on our side they might be swayed much like the Democratic side would be, right? So they’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call."
The political pressure is astonishing, even for Trump. And in the light of his stochastic terrorism against Justices Engoron and Chutkan, it is intolerable, and it portends true threats against any justice Trump feels hasn't been "loyal" to him.
THERE MIGHT be good news out of New Hampshire: one poll shows Trump leading Nikki Haley by just four points with two weeks until the primary. There was also a good opening advertising salvo by the Biden campaign against the threat Trump is manifesting. And the same Alina Habba went on another streaming show and insisted that given the choice between being smart or pretty she'd choose pretty because "I can fake being smart."
Well, no, sorry. You clearly can't.
B-Block (32:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD:
Attorney Alina Habba did it again, again on Fox. Wednesday it was in the afternoon; last night it was in prime time. The message is loud and clear, and God knows with the utter corruption of the conservatives on THIS court you could never convict anybody of doing anything, but this is either an illegal threat AGAINST Justice Brett Kavanaugh and others, or it is the back half of an illegal quid pro quo. Habba said she "had faith" in "people like Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place. He'll step up."
A week ago today Maggie Haberman went on CNN and said Trump feared SCOTUS might rule against him because it was trying to look balanced. On Tuesday, his first simpleton attorney Christina Bobb said that any ruling - even one declaring that Trump was guilty of insurrection - would be irrelevant if the people wanted Trump as their ruler. Wednesday, Habba insisted that "Republicans" (she meant Supreme Court Justices) "unfortunately sometimes shy away from being pro-Trump because they feel that even if the law’s on our side they might be swayed much like the Democratic side would be, right? So they’re trying so hard to look neutral that sometimes they make the wrong call."
The political pressure is astonishing, even for Trump. And in the light of his stochastic terrorism against Justices Engoron and Chutkan, it is intolerable, and it portends true threats against any justice Trump feels hasn't been "loyal" to him.
THERE MIGHT be good news out of New Hampshire: one poll shows Trump leading Nikki Haley by just four points with two weeks until the primary. There was also a good opening advertising salvo by the Biden campaign against the threat Trump is manifesting. And the same Alina Habba went on another streaming show and insisted that given the choice between being smart or pretty she'd choose pretty because "I can fake being smart."
Well, no, sorry. You clearly can't.
B-Block (32:20) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD:
Like every other rich fascist before him, Elon Musk wants to destroy the National Labor Relations Board. Politico has a good joke at his expense. RFK Jr's Super Pac apparently made it up about Dionne Warwick AND Martin Sheen. And the Associated Press article that actually headlines Bothsidesism on tomorrow's 3rd Anniversary of Trump's January 6th Coup: “One Attack, Two Interpretations: Biden And Trump Both Make The January 6 Riot A Political Rallying Cry.”
Jan 4, 2024
Today's Podcast
- Republicans aren't messaging well
- Let the vibes rule
- Millionaire's Tax in Massachusetts
- Johnny Cash was a hippie
- Michelle Obama will not be riding to anyone's rescue - cuz Joe doesn't need no rescuing
- Let us not be queasy about strenuously defending the constitution
COVID-19 Update
I think I'm over the hump battling whatever this shit is that's making me feel like I'm coughing up the lining of my lungs, and blowing these weird cornflake-looking boogers out of my nose.
I tested yesterday, and came up negative for COVID, but dang this has been quite a fight.
I slept OK last night, and I think I'm on the mend.
That said - and thank you for indulging me on that one - here comes COVID again.
The United States is in the throes of another covid-19 uptick, cementing a pattern of the virus surging around the holidays as doctors and public health officials brace for greater transmission after Americans return to school and work this week.
Coronavirus samples detected in wastewater, the best metric for estimating community viral activity, suggests infections could be as rampant as they were last winter. A smattering of health facilities around the country, including every one in Los Angeles County, are requiring masks again. JN.1, the new dominant variant, appears to be especially adept at infecting those who have been vaccinated or previously infected.
While photos of positive coronavirus tests are once again proliferating across social media, fewer people are going to the hospital than a year ago. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 29,000 covid hospitalizations in the week before Christmas, the most recent data, compared with 39,000 the previous year. The agency has reported an average of 1,400 weekly deaths since Thanksgiving, less than half of the fatalities at the same point last year.
Even so, covid remains one of the leading causes of death as well as the top driver of respiratory virus hospitalizations — worsening the strain on hospitals also seeing influxes of flu and RSV cases.
“Of the three major viruses, it is still the virus putting people in the hospital most and taking their life,” CDC Director Mandy Cohen said in an interview Wednesday.
Even mild cases can lead to the lasting complications inflicted by long covid.
When you have covid, here's how to know if you're no longer contagious
The CDC still recommends people isolate for five days after testing positive, though many Americans have stopped doing so and free tests are harder to come by, making it easier for the virus to keep spreading if people don’t know their cold is actually covid.
“As with any public health advice, getting people to adhere to policies is always challenging,” said Simbo Ige, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health who is urging residents to follow that guidance. “Appealing to people’s desire to be part of the solution to ending covid or reducing the impact of covid is what we have seen be most effective.”
Michihiko Goto, an infectious-disease specialist who has seen a modest uptick in covid patients at the Department of Veterans Affairs in Iowa City, worries that the return of college students will seed more infection in the coming weeks.
The CDC guidance for isolation makes sense, he said, but the reality is that many people do not have the flexibility at work to do so.
“People without paid sick leave may not be able to [isolate] because they have to feed their families,” he said.
While coronavirus cases have surged every winter since the pandemic began, the CDC says it is not yet considered a seasonal disease like influenza. The coronavirus fluctuates throughout the year, and the typical winter waves could be influenced by other factors such as holiday travel, cold weather pushing people indoors and the evolution of the virus. The JN.1 variant that is now the most common in the United States has significantly more mutations than its predecessors, which could explain why people who had dodged infections during the summer surge are getting sick.
“If you look at the different peaks in cases since the beginning of the pandemic, every one of them coincided with the emergence of a new variant,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “Too many people are attributing this to seasonality.”
Few Americans are staying up to date on their coronavirus vaccines to train their immune systems to keep up with an evolving virus. According to CDC estimates, just 19 percent of Americans have received the latest version of the vaccine that lab experiments show offer better protection against the JN.1 variant than the previous formula.
“That’s not doing enough to suppress the virus from evolving, getting stronger and more evasive,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist and senior science communication adviser at the de Beaumont Foundation, a public health organization.
Medical professionals and public health officials say they’re facing growing skepticism of coronavirus vaccines, particularly among conservatives. The latest pushback came Wednesday from Florida’s top health official, who urged people to stop receiving mRNA coronavirus vaccines, citing debunked claims that they could contaminate patients’ DNA.
Mainstream health officials have encouraged vaccination, particularly for people older than 65, to minimize the damage caused by covid waves.
Wastewater tracking by the firm Biobot Analytics shows that the most recent coronavirus levels were slightly lower than the same point last year, except in the Midwest. The difference could be driven by changes in vaccines and variants affecting how much virus people shed, said Marisa Donnelly, a Biobot epidemiologist.
Donnelly said wastewater data is best used as a warning sign when levels rise.
“Right now as I’m seeing really high rates of covid-19 in wastewater, I start to worry about people who are immunocompromised or have risk factors that put them at greater risk of developing severe covid,” Donnelly said.
While the CDC had flagged New York and New Jersey in mid-December as among the first states with the highest share of infections caused by the new variant and high respiratory virus levels, hospitals in those states say those trends did not translate to crises in their wards.
“It’s not uncontrollable, and it’s nothing like it was last year,” said Cathy Bennett, president and CEO of the New Jersey Hospital Association.
Hospital leaders now talk about the coronavirus in the context of the broader respiratory virus season. RSV, most often seen in infants and toddlers in pediatric wards, has already peaked nationally. The flu season started later than normal and is now accelerating, with 136,000 emergency department visits for influenza last week compared with 79,000 for covid.
Northwell Health, New York’s largest health-care system, has seen a surge in people coming to the emergency room and outpatient facilities testing positive for the coronavirus, which was expected after Thanksgiving. Those patients are typically discharged quickly and rarely end up severely ill.
“If you are looking at very sick people in the ICUs, it’s more likely flu than covid,” said Bruce Farber, an infectious disease physician and the system’s chief of public health and epidemiology. “If you are looking at total population in the hospital with people with some respiratory illness, it’s overwhelmingly covid.”
But the addition of covid to the usual winter swirl of respiratory viruses has strained other hospitals — including in Minnesota, where wastewater levels increased tenfold in the week before Christmas.
Few Americans are staying up to date on their coronavirus vaccines to train their immune systems to keep up with an evolving virus. According to CDC estimates, just 19 percent of Americans have received the latest version of the vaccine that lab experiments show offer better protection against the JN.1 variant than the previous formula.
“That’s not doing enough to suppress the virus from evolving, getting stronger and more evasive,” said Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist and senior science communication adviser at the de Beaumont Foundation, a public health organization.
Medical professionals and public health officials say they’re facing growing skepticism of coronavirus vaccines, particularly among conservatives. The latest pushback came Wednesday from Florida’s top health official, who urged people to stop receiving mRNA coronavirus vaccines, citing debunked claims that they could contaminate patients’ DNA.
Mainstream health officials have encouraged vaccination, particularly for people older than 65, to minimize the damage caused by covid waves.
Wastewater tracking by the firm Biobot Analytics shows that the most recent coronavirus levels were slightly lower than the same point last year, except in the Midwest. The difference could be driven by changes in vaccines and variants affecting how much virus people shed, said Marisa Donnelly, a Biobot epidemiologist.
Donnelly said wastewater data is best used as a warning sign when levels rise.
“Right now as I’m seeing really high rates of covid-19 in wastewater, I start to worry about people who are immunocompromised or have risk factors that put them at greater risk of developing severe covid,” Donnelly said.
While the CDC had flagged New York and New Jersey in mid-December as among the first states with the highest share of infections caused by the new variant and high respiratory virus levels, hospitals in those states say those trends did not translate to crises in their wards.
“It’s not uncontrollable, and it’s nothing like it was last year,” said Cathy Bennett, president and CEO of the New Jersey Hospital Association.
Hospital leaders now talk about the coronavirus in the context of the broader respiratory virus season. RSV, most often seen in infants and toddlers in pediatric wards, has already peaked nationally. The flu season started later than normal and is now accelerating, with 136,000 emergency department visits for influenza last week compared with 79,000 for covid.
Northwell Health, New York’s largest health-care system, has seen a surge in people coming to the emergency room and outpatient facilities testing positive for the coronavirus, which was expected after Thanksgiving. Those patients are typically discharged quickly and rarely end up severely ill.
“If you are looking at very sick people in the ICUs, it’s more likely flu than covid,” said Bruce Farber, an infectious disease physician and the system’s chief of public health and epidemiology. “If you are looking at total population in the hospital with people with some respiratory illness, it’s overwhelmingly covid.”
But the addition of covid to the usual winter swirl of respiratory viruses has strained other hospitals — including in Minnesota, where wastewater levels increased tenfold in the week before Christmas.
“Every hospital that does pediatric care is saturated,” said John Hick, an emergency physician at Hennepin Healthcare, in downtown Minneapolis, which has 25 pediatric beds.
For the past month, hospital officials across the state have held coordination calls three times a week to triage which facilities have pediatric beds and whether certain patients can be moved into adult units, Hick said. Last week, the hospital began requiring patients and clinicians to wear masks again when interacting.
On Hick’s last ER shift a few days before Christmas, half the patients had either covid or the flu. He expects to see more covid cases in the coming weeks, given low vaccination rates.
What’s most dismaying, he said, is that many of those cases are preventable.
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