Justice Kagan: Conservative majority on Supreme Court 'grasps for power'

Justice Elena Kagan photographed in bad company - with "Coke Can" Clarence and Circus Ringmaster and Clown Roberts.

By Joan McCarter

Daily Kos Staff

Friday, June 28, 2024 at 10:51:10a MDT

REPUBLISHED BY: 

The Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent on Friday that said courts should largely defer to federal agencies when it comes to interpreting and enforcing ambiguous laws written by Congress. It ruled 6-3 in Relentless v. Department of Commerce and 6-2 in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo (Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused), effectively seizing those agencies’ power for themselves.

This is the conservative court once again ruling itself king—above Congress, above the executive branch—in public life.

In her Loper dissent, Justice Elena Kagan blasted the court’s majority in no uncertain terms for both the power grab and its continued trashing of precedent. “Congress knows that it does not—in fact cannot—write perfectly complete regulatory statutes. It knows that those statutes will inevitably contain ambiguities that some other actor will have to resolve, and gaps that some other actor will have to fill,” Kagan explained. “And it would usually prefer that actor to be the responsible agency, not a court.”

For good reason. Just yesterday Justice Neil Gorsuch displayed his expertise in clean air regulation, mixing up “nitrous oxide” (laughing gas) and pollution generating "nitrogen oxides.” Five times. And now these people will hold final say over ensuring our water, air, workplaces, food, and drugs are safe.

These two decisions also follow the conservatives’ decision on Wednesday in Snyder v. U.S., which declared it legal to bribe public officials as long as the reward comes after the official does what the briber wants, instead of before. As Jackson wrote in her dissent, it’s an interpretation of the law “is one only today’s Court could love.”

Combined with another ruling from Thursday in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, which threatens decades-old enforcement powers in federal agencies and hands that power to the courts, this court majority is the most radical—and corrupt—in generations.

In her Loper dissent, Kagan continued to explain what is so dangerous in Friday’s rulings:

Today, the Court flips the script: It is now ‘the courts (rather than the agency)’ that will wield power when Congress has left an area of interpretive discretion. A rule of judicial humility gives way to a rule of judicial hubris. [...]

In one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue—no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden—involving the meaning of regulatory law. As if it did not have enough on its plate, the majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar. It defends that move as one (suddenly) required by the (nearly 80-year-old) Administrative Procedure Act. But the Act makes no such demand. Today’s decision is not one Congress directed. It is entirely the majority’s choice. [...]

Its justification comes down, in the end, to this: Courts must have more say over regulation—over the provision of health care, the protection of the environment, the safety of consumer products, the efficacy of transportation systems, and so on. A longstanding precedent at the crux of administrative governance thus falls victim to a bald assertion of judicial authority. The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power.

Kagan also warns that “it is impossible to pretend that today’s decision is a one-off, in either its treatment of agencies or its treatment of precedent.”

As Eli Mystal, justice correspondent for The Nation, commented, “Conservatives have now completed their generational goals of overturning Abortion, Affirmative Action, and Chevron. If y'all don't think Obergefell and gay marriage is next on the chopping block, you must read the New York Times.”

You gotta know RBG is watching from the grave in utter disbelief at how thoroughly dishonest the six conservative Supremes have become.

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DEBATE AFTERTHOUGHTS 2: Both Totally Unfit

"This choice between incapacity and malice"

Opinion by Elizabeth Bruenig

The Atlantic

The first presidential debate of this election cycle is over, and what a depressing spectacle it was. I can’t remember feeling guilty watching a campaign event before, but seeing the exchanges between Joe Biden and Donald Trump felt like participating in elder abuse. There’s nothing winsome about pestering old men with incessant questions as if to deny them the dignity of their dotage.

Biden was particularly ill-served by the proceedings. From the moment he shuffled onstage and muttered his first answer in a hushed and wheezing monotone, it was clear that he is too old for the job he has right now, and certainly too old for another four-year term. The president is in the wintertime of his life. He ought to rest.

Trump, meanwhile, was much the same as he always has been, if somewhat muted—more mottled now, less coppery, hair thinned out to the soft white blond of a towheaded child. He ignored every question posed to him, repeating bizarre lies (for instance, it does not appear that “hundreds of thousands” of people are being murdered by migrants in New York or anywhere else) until his time ran out. Biden seemed in worse condition, but Trump was by no means sharp.

When pressed gently about his age, Biden said that for a long time, he was the youngest guy in politics, and now he’s one of the oldest; the answer then veered into a discussion of “computer chips.” Like two geezers in a nursing home, the men squabbled over golf handicaps as though a low-enough score could convince onlookers of their good health. If the debate itself was an assessment of the candidates’ acuity, nobody prevailed.

Biden and Trump did engage substantively on some issues. There was a barely followable exchange over abortion during which Trump refused to take up a typical GOP pro-life stance and instead counseled voters, “You gotta follow your heart.” They battled over who has catered best to veterans, bickering about Trump’s deranged comments on the war dead. They competed to express unremitting support for Israel in its war against Hamas, despite the destruction of Gaza. There was very little policy to argue about, but presidential debates aren’t about policy; they’re about creating impressions. And the impression was bad.

Theoretically, we came to this juncture—this choice between incapacity and malice—through the operation of democracy, meaning that it’s a quandary we ourselves chose. But Biden knows this much: The will of the people can be wrong. When asked whether Trump’s supporters are voting against democracy, he said the ones who vote for the former president are indeed intent upon reversing democratic methods and norms. In that case, there are people in America whose will is to destroy it. Candidates often accuse their opponents’ supporters of voting against their own best interests, but these voters seem set on voting against everyone’s best interests

The candidates said some factual things and some false things, but only one message came across as true: Our nation is shambling along the road to hell, and there doesn’t appear to be an off-ramp. “We are living in a rat’s nest,” Trump said, right for the wrong reasons. “We’re like a bunch of stupid people,” he went on; “we’re a failing nation.” Absolutely, but not because of migrants or the Chinese or the Russians: This mess is made in America, and all of us are going to suffer for it.

DEBATE AFTERTHOUGHTS: Biden might be old, but Trump is an existential menace

"Oh no!" vs "Hell no!"

By Kerry Eleveld

Daily Kos Staff 

Friday, June 28, 2024 at 8:00:13a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

The thoughts of many Americans who tuned in to Thursday night's first 2024 presidential debate were perhaps best summed up by an Arizona voter and self-identified Republican named Jeff.

"The feeling I had inside was, Trump, hell no—he lied through the whole thing,” Jeff told MSNBC, “and Biden is like, oh no—he is really in bad shape."

Jeff is exactly the type of swing voter President Joe Biden needs to win over in November and whom the Biden campaign clearly hoped to assuage at the very least. Stylistically, however, Biden routinely stuttered and stumbled and generally reminded voters of one of their biggest hesitations about him: that he's old.

But while Biden may have fallen short of expectations on that count, the live primetime face-off did appear to have the desired effect of reminding persuadable voters what a menace Donald Trump is. Trump lied liberally throughout the debate, but his most disqualifying moments came on questions related to the rule of law and the preservation of democracy.

On the subject of Jan. 6, Trump tried to sell himself as an innocent bystander who merely had incidental contact with the rioters.

"They asked me to go make a speech," Trump explained during the debate.

Then he took several cracks at blaming former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for failing to stymie the attack, claiming she turned down his offer of sending 10,000 national guard troops to defend the Capitol and has since taken responsibility for not being more prepared. 

Trump's entire explanation is sheer fantasy that surely plays great to the MAGA masses but reads as patently false to anyone who isn't living in the Fox fever swamps. 

Trump also defended the Jan. 6 rioters while taking aim at Biden.

"What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Trump said to Biden during the debate. "What you have done, how you’ve destroyed the lives of so many people."

There's a reason no pollster has ever asked voters if they believe Biden has mistreated the Jan. 6 rioters—no sane person believes that. Also, defending the people who brutalized police officers and ransacked the Capitol that day is a deeply unpopular cause.

On the 2024 election, Trump was given multiple opportunities to say he would accept the results in November, but he couldn't bring himself to simply say yes.

After several tries by the moderator, Trump finally conceded, "If it’s a fair and legal and good election, absolutely."

Perhaps not coincidentally, Biden's finest moments came in defense of democracy and American ideals. He blasted Trump for standing idly by on Jan. 6 as the rioters stormed the Capitol.

“He didn’t do a damn thing,” Biden said. “And these people should be in jail, and they should be the ones who are being held accountable. And he wants to let them all out.”

Biden revisited Trump calling World War I veterans "losers and suckers," a story first reported in The Atlantic in 2020 and later corroborated by former four-star Marine general and Trump chief of staff John Kelly.

"My son was not a loser, not a sucker," Biden said. "You're the loser, you're the sucker."

And after Trump repeatedly disparaged America as "destroyed" and "failing," Biden came to the nation's defense.

"The idea that somehow we are this failing country, I never heard a president talk like this before," Biden said. "We’re the envy of the world. Name me a single major country president who wouldn’t trade places with the United States of America. For all our problems and all our opportunities, we’re the most progressive country in the world and getting things done. We’re the strongest country in the world."

Biden also hammered Trump for proclaiming he would seek retribution if elected president, calling it "wrong."

"No president’s ever spoken like that before," Biden said. "No president in our history has spoken like that before."

The Biden campaign surely didn't accomplish everything it hoped to during the debate, but the contrast was clear. Biden came across as a decent man who cares for his fellow citizens and still believes the United States is the greatest country on earth; Trump presented an unrepentant, self-obsessed bloviator whose appetite for lying is insatiable. 

But ultimately, it's the assessment of voters like Jeff that will matter most, and how that shakes out remains to be seen in the coming weeks.

The News: That debate…oof.

Biden's performance was very rough, and Trump is a lying fascist who refuses to accept election results. It is what it is.

By Ezra Levin

(Editor's note: Ezra Levin is an American political activist and co-founder of the progressive non-profit organization, Indivisible. He is co-author of We Are Indivisible: A Blueprint for Democracy After Trump, published in 2019.)

June 28, 2024

Here’s my personal opinion on the debate: Biden turned in a terrible performance and Trump was an unhinged, nonsensical, lie-spewing, convicted felon who refused to accept the last election results or the next one. It was painful to watch.

But here’s the thing: Ultimately my personal opinion on this doesn’t matter. I know who I’m voting for. You know who you’re voting for. We don’t need convincing. The question is what impact this had on the voters who aren’t already with us -- the folks who don’t like politics, who find elites of both parties untrustworthy, and who aren’t currently thinking about the stakes of this election.

In the days to come, we're going to get a ton of data on how these voters reacted to the debate. Frankly, there's no reason to think Biden won people to our side. I also don't think there's much reason to think Trump won them over, either.

But let's not skip over the damage Trump did to himself. He refused not once, not twice, but three times to accept the results of this election. He refused again to accept the results of the last election. And he bragged about killing Roe and opening the floodgates to attacks on reproductive rights around the country. You don’t have to be a Democratic campaigner in the spin room to recognize all that is deeply unpopular and bad for Trump.

You’re going to hear me repeat this a lot in the months to come: When voters focus on the personalities, we struggle. When voters focus on the stakes, we win. And what all the data so far tells us is that many, many voters do not yet understand the stakes. 

I wish Biden had done better in this debate. But there is no world where Biden could carry this message on his own regardless of how well he landed his lines. He’s an elected politician and a member of one of our two national, unpopular political parties. Our target audience -- those folks who legitimately are torn between voting for Biden, voting third party, or not voting at all -- view him and others in his class with skepticism. Mathematically speaking, most of them did not even tune into the debate.  

You and I know these stakes -- it’s what makes us so engaged in this fight. And we need to blast it out again and again and again, in as many creative ways as possible, in the hope that eventually it will break through with the voters we need. Not the first or second time, but maybe the eighth or ninth. 

So here’s my real take on the debate: Ask not what Biden can do to win the election; ask what you can do to help defeat Trump. And that brings us the brag: 

The Brag: But what can we do? Lots.

I’ve been writing about the two-year anniversary of the Republicans overturning Roe for a couple months. When nearly a third of voters blame Biden or aren’t sure who to blame for killing Roe, we know we have to correct the record or risk losing in November. But far more important than what I write here is what Indivisible movement leaders do to take narrative advantage of this moment. Here’s the strategic logic of this work:

The problem: Many voters who support reproductive rights aren’t paying close enough attention to assign blame to Trump and Republicans for attacking reproductive rights.

The message: Republicans stacked the court with right-wingers to kill Roe, enacted state abortion bans across the country, and are actively blocking the Right to IVF Act and the Right to Contraception Act. 

The messenger: Biden and other elected Democrats can carry the right message, but for that message to get through to the voters we need to reach, we need the right messengers. And there’s no better messenger than friendly fellow community members.  

That's where we can play a critical role in saving democracy.  Each and every one of us.  Each and every day. 

Images from the debate.

DEBATE NIGHT SPECIAL: Trump's weird war on EVs now includes attacking imaginary electric tanks

Donald Trump in a vehicle that is probably not electric.

By Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday, June 26, 2024 at 9:30:04a MDT

 

REPUBLISHED BY:

Blue Country Gazette Blog

Rim Country Gazette Blog 

Donald Trump’s recent rambling about sharks vs. batteries has become such an incoherent mess that it’s hard to remember that this story, which has been a part of Trump’s rally speech for years, once had a point. The point was the batteries: Trump hates them, and he hates every form of electric vehicle that they might be placed inside.

Hating on batteries is Trump’s way of signaling his allegiance to fossil fuels. Trump has repeatedly said that electric cars can only “drive for 15 minutes” before they need to be recharged. In contrast, Trump says that a diesel truck—complete with an apartment you would be “proud to live in”—can drive across the nation without refueling once.

The list of Trump’s EV lies was lengthy a year ago, but it just keeps growing. And like the shark vs. battery story, it keeps getting more bizarre. Now Trump is attacking the Pentagon for its electric tanks—a thing that absolutely, positively does not exist.

Letting Trump get away with lies is practically the favorite sport of the national media, but Trump's lies about electric vehicles are so obvious that some of them should be the subject of questions during the debate.

Trump regularly claims that "all EVs are made in China." This isn't true. In fact, the number of EVs sold in the U.S. that originate in China is exactly zero. Most of the electric cars sold here are made in the U.S. This seems like something he might want to explain during his next breakfast with Elon … and it also seems like Musk should be explaining to Tesla stockholders why he favors the guy who keeps attacking the industry.

Trump means to slam the brakes on EV sales at a time when Americans are buying record numbers and consumer choice of electric vehicles is rapidly expanding. That includes ending federal policies that help lower the cost of electric vehicles and develop networks for recharging, adding a 100% tariff to EVs built in Mexico where both GM and Tesla plan to assemble lower-cost vehicles.

While Trump’s effort to secure a $1 billion bribe from oil and gas executives has been well reported, many of those reports leave out just what Trump was promising in exchange: ending EV incentives and making sure they stay dead. 

But in recent rallies, Trump has added military electric vehicles to his attack list, not just because they contain his hated batteries, but because they do something else he hates—try to improve the environment.

As Politico reports, Trump has claimed that both electric tanks and sustainable jet fuel are going to cripple the American military.

“They want to make our Army tanks all electric so that when we go into a foreign country, blazing hot, we’re going in, we keep their environment and their air nice and clean,” Trump told a Wisconsin crowd in May. “Now how crazy is it?”

It was just one of several statements in which Trump talked about “their environment” or “our enemy’s atmosphere.” He apparently doesn’t understand that we all breathe the same air and that pollution can’t be limited by borders.

But that’s far from the most spectacular Trump lie about the military’s effort to develop new vehicles.

“They don’t go far and they have to pull a wagon because the wagon, the battery, is so big that the Army tanks will have a wagon like a child,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News. “He’s pulling a wagon.”

This child-like tank is completely nonexistent: No such tank has been built, no such tank has been planned, no such tank has even been thought about. 

The closest the military has come has been considering using the same kind of hybrid diesel-battery technology found in trains. Those systems have proven so effective that they are expected to replace conventional diesel in the near future because they provide more power and greater range. And when it comes to tanks, even this alternative is only in the early stages of consideration.

Trump's statements about EVs are clearly meant to signal his support for fossil fuels, but his statements aren't just wrong, they're complete fantasies. He’s promising to set back American industry by decades, forcing American companies to produce vehicles that few other countries want, while spewing lies about a tank that pulls a wagon.

It’s a promise to build another kind of wall around America; One where the products inside are so backward that no one outside wants them. And it’s all based on lies.

It would be nice if someone called him on it.

With his back-to-the-cave mentality Trump would have been a great mayor of Bedrock.

Thanks to Trump and the Supremes, Pregnancy in America Is Starting to Feel Like a Crime

 

  A woman in prison. (photo: BioEdge)

Ripple effects of the fall of Roe by Trump and his kangaroo court extend far beyond abortion.

26 june 24

Anna North / Vox 25 

Imagine you’re eight months pregnant, and you wake up in the middle of the night to a bolt of pain across your belly.

Terrified you might be losing your pregnancy, you rush to the emergency room — only to be told that no one there will care for you, because they’re worried they could be accused of participating in an abortion. The staff tells you to drive to another hospital, but that will take hours, by which time, it might be too late.

Such frightening experiences are growing more common in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, as doctors and other medical staff, fearful of the far-reaching effects of state abortion bans, are simply refusing to treat pregnant people at all.

It’s part of what some reproductive health activists see as a disturbing progression from bans on abortion to a climate of suspicion around all pregnant patients. “People are increasingly scared even to be pregnant,” said Elizabeth Ling, senior helpline counsel at the reproductive justice legal group If/When/How.

The fall of Roe has led to an ever-widening net of criminalization that can ensnare doctors, nurses, and pregnant people alike, leading to devastating consequences for patients’ health, experts say.

Complaints of pregnant women turned away from emergency rooms doubled in the months after Dobbs, the Associated Press reported earlier this year. Concerns about such treatment, combined with stories of people like Kate Cox, who was denied an abortion despite the risks her pregnancy posed to her health, have made some Americans afraid of conceiving: In one recent poll, 34 percent of women 18 to 39 said they or someone they knew had “decided not to get pregnant due to concerns about managing pregnancy-related medical emergencies.”

Such surveys, along with ER records and calls to helplines, reveal a sense that in a post-Dobbs America, any pregnancy can be dangerous — to patients, to doctors, or both. “The fact that people are viewing the condition of pregnancy as something that makes them vulnerable to state violence is just so heartbreaking,” Ling said.

Americans are facing prosecution after miscarriage

The Dobbs decision has created an environment in which people experiencing miscarriage are treated as criminals or crimes waiting to happen, advocates say — or sometimes both.

In October 2023, an Ohio woman named Brittany Watts visited a hospital, 21 weeks pregnant and bleeding. Doctors determined that her water had broken early and her fetus would not survive, but since her pregnancy was approaching the point at which Ohio bans abortions, a hospital ethics panel kept her waiting for eight hours while they debated what to do. She eventually returned home, miscarried, tried to dispose of the fetal remains herself, and was charged with felony abuse of a corpse.

The charges were ultimately dropped, but experts say her case is part of a larger pattern. “There has become this hypersurveillance, hyperpolicing, hyperinterrogation” of pregnant people in America, said Michele Goodwin, a professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown and the author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood.

That surveillance isn’t entirely new, advocates and scholars say. Black pregnant women, especially, have been targets of suspicion for generations, stereotyped as drug users or “welfare queens” and even arrested when they tried to seek maternity care, said Goodwin. “There are cases of Black women having been dragged out of hospitals, literally in shackles and chains,” Goodwin said.

Black women and other women and girls of color have also been disproportionately targeted for arrest or investigation following miscarriages or stillbirths. In 1999, Regina McKnight, a 22-year-old Black woman in South Carolina, became the first person prosecuted for homicide after experiencing a stillbirth, according to Capital B. She was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison for endangering her pregnancy through drug use, but her conviction was eventually overturned.

But now, the atmosphere of criminalization around pregnancy is “spreading into wider and wider groups of people,” said Karen Thompson, legal director of the group Pregnancy Justice, which tracks the criminalization of pregnant people.

Black advocates have long cautioned that while the criminalization of pregnancy might affect Black and brown women today, “tomorrow it’s everybody,” Goodwin said. “Dobbs brought us into the tomorrow.”

Dobbs is making doctors scared to treat pregnant patients

In the tomorrow of post-Dobbs America, doctors and hospital staff now fear criminal charges if they are found to have performed an abortion in violation of their state’s bans. These bans have exceptions for saving the life, or sometimes the health, of the pregnant person, but the exceptions are often extremely narrow or unclear, forcing medical professionals to choose between refusing to treat a severely ill patient and losing their license or going to jail.

“The way the states write their statutes, there’s no deference to the medical judgment of the doctor,” said Sara Rosenbaum, an emerita professor of health law and policy at George Washington University. “It has had a profound chilling effect on any care in emergency departments, because physicians and hospitals are in a panic.”

That chilling effect is leading some doctors to refuse not just to perform abortions, but also to provide any care for pregnant people in crisis, lest their care draw scrutiny in a restrictive and uncertain legal environment. A week after the Dobbs ruling, a woman arrived at Falls Community Hospital in Marlin, Texas, nine months pregnant and having contractions, according to a federal investigation of ER visits. The doctor on duty refused to treat her, instead sending her to another hospital in Waco, the AP reported. The outcome of her pregnancy — and the impact on her health of delayed maternal care — are unknown.

In another case, a pregnant woman arrived at a North Carolina hospital complaining of stomach pain. Staff told her they could not perform an ultrasound, and she eventually gave birth in a car on the way to another facility 45 minutes away, the AP reported. The baby did not survive.

“We’re talking a level of outlandishness that is up there with The Handmaid’s Tale,” Rosenbaum said.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) requires all hospitals that accept Medicare to stabilize the medical condition of anyone who arrives at an emergency room, including pregnant people. But the medical interventions allowed under new state abortion laws are often less than what EMTALA requires, Rosenbaum said.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court in the coming days will decide a case that could gut EMTALA, giving hospitals even more leeway to turn away pregnant patients.“I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that the loss of EMTALA, or even just weakening of EMTALA, puts pregnant people’s lives at risk,” Ling said.

Even people who are not yet pregnant feel the widening effects of Dobbs. The If/When/How helpline has received calls from people who want to become pregnant, but are terrified that “they might experience an unexpected loss like a miscarriage, and still somehow be punished for experiencing that loss,” Ling said.

In recent months, she has heard herself say the words, “it is not a crime to be pregnant,” she told Vox. And yet, more and more, it feels like it is.

"The fall of Roe has led to an ever-widening net of criminalization that can ensnare doctors, nurses, and pregnant people alike."

 

Trump Unleashed: This Is the Calm Before the Storm

Former President Donald Trump. (photo: Getty/Salon)

 

We will look back at these months before the election and Trump’s sentencing as relatively good times

Chauncey DeVega / Salon

24 June 24 

Donald Trump is unleashed.

Following his historic felony conviction in New York for election interference, the former president has become even more dangerous. As the 2024 election approaches and he feels more pressure from the potential of time in prison for his crimes, Trump’s violent and antisocial behavior will only escalate.

In the last few days and weeks, Donald Trump has, again, threatened to have President Biden and other leading Democrats put in prison. Trump has also threatened them with execution for “treason." During a recent interview with TV personality Dr. Phil, Trump plainly stated that he would have to seek revenge on President Biden and his other so-called enemies.“Well, revenge does take time, I will say that….And sometimes revenge can be justified, Phil, I have to be honest. Sometimes it can.”

Trump’s campaign speeches have become filled with even more menace — what MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has astutely described as “pornographically violent” — even by his standards. While it is easy to focus on Trump’s “unhinged” behavior as he obsesses about his fear of sharks and the evils of electric trucks, the sinister nature of Trump’s speeches and his dark charisma should not be ignored or otherwise overlooked or deemphasized. Trump’s MAGA cultists treat his speeches and rallies like a type of religious service where they are worshipping their Dear Leader as a type of prophet and messiah-god-martyr.

Trump is continuing to summon and channel Adolf Hitler and the Nazis as he uses eliminationist and other genocidal language to describe non-white migrants and refugees and the other people (Democrats, liberals, and “the Left”) he views as “vermin” and human pollution in American society.

In a democracy, the news media is supposed to serve as watchdogs who hold the powerful accountable and educate the public so that they can make informed voting and other political decisions. Ideally, the news media should tell the public what is important, how to think about it, and then what to do about it. In a country such as the United States that is experiencing a democracy crisis, those responsibilities are heightened. In the Age of Trump, the American news media has mostly failed in those obligations and responsibilities. 

To that point, the mainstream news media has continued to mostly ignore Donald Trump’s increasingly dangerous language, as seen in his fundraising emails and coordinated campaign propaganda, to radicalize his MAGA people and other followers into committing acts of violence if he is sentenced to prison for his many crimes and/or loses the 2024 election.

Here are some of the most incendiary fundraising emails that Donald Trump has recently sent out to his MAGA followers:

In this email, Trump is telling his MAGA people they are living under a Biden “dictatorship” and suffering under tyranny. This is of course a willful lie and act of projection. Donald Trump has promised to be a dictator on “day one” of his presidency if he wins the 2024 election. President Biden is a staunch defender of American democracy and its institutions. If one accepts the premise of Trump’s claim the logical response is violence and war.

BIDEN’S SOVIET TACTICS DON’T SCARE ME!

I’d go to jail AGAIN AND AGAIN if that’s what it took to Save America.

Because this fight has always been bigger than me, Friend.

It’s about restoring power where it belongs - TO YOU THE PEOPLE - and ending the tyrannical Biden regime’s reign of terror once and for all.

So I’m asking you to boldly and peacefully rebel against the Deep State radicals who’ve infiltrated our government by chipping in and declaring: I STAND WITH TRUMP!

STAND WITH TRUMP

It’s no secret why the Marxists and Fascists in power are so desperate to purge our America First movement from existence.

They know that I’m this nation's last line of defense against the TOTAL DESTRUCTION.

And they’ll do ANYTHING, even burn our entire country to the ground, just to keep me out of office.

STAND WITH TRUMP

But mark my words, Friend. I WILL NOT BE INTIMIDATED, BULLIED, OR JAILED INTO SILENCE. As long as YOU are by my side, I WILL NEVER SURRENDER!

Please join me and send these tyrants and villains a message they’ll NEVER forget.

In the following fundraising email, Trump is even more explicit as he uses language about “MAGA” being attacked with gunfire and other such lethal violence by President Biden, the Democrats, “Woke”, and the “deep state” and other supposed non-existent enemies as part of a “witch hunt” conspiracy to oppress him and his MAGA cultists and other “real Americans” (read White Americans). Again, the logical, legitimate, and moral solution to such existential threats is lethal violence and war.

THEY OPENED FIRE ON MAGA!

NOBODY is safe from the RADICAL LEFT WAR MACHINE.

I warned you this would happen after my rigged conviction:

#1 FIRST they weaponize the courts to TAKE ME DOWN.

#2 NEXT they threaten me with LIFE IN JAIL because I refuse to stay SILENT.

#3 And when they’re through with me, THEY’RE COMING AFTER YOU, Friend!

They've turned the beautiful country we built together into a WAR ZONE.

But I know that with YOU by my side, NOTHING will stop us from Saving America.

So before the end of the day, I'm calling on ONE MILLION FREEDOM-LOVING PATRIOTS to chip in and declare: END THE WITCH HUNT! >

END THE WITCH HUNT

The future of America rests in your hands!

In this third example, Donald Trump threatens President Biden with a “day of reckoning." Given Trump’s previous public and private comments this means putting President Biden in prison and then executing him for “treason." Trump also continues to trigger the death anxieties and other existential fears of his MAGA people, where again, the predictable (and obviously desired) outcome is violence.

BIDEN'S DAY OF RECKONING IS COMING

He tried to publicly torture and humiliate me ... BUT HE FAILED.

He tried to raid my home and take me out with deadly force... BUT HE FAILED.

He tried to bury me with so many witch hunts that I'd be forced to quit... BUT HE FAILED.

STAND WITH TRUMP

34 RIGGED FELONY CONVICTIONS calls for an unprecedented response.

And if our response to his tyrannical regime isn't MASSIVE, Biden will move onto his next target: YOU!

So I've set a goal of raising $34 MILLION by the end of the day to make Biden regret EVER coming after us. Chip in today if you STAND WITH TRUMP!

STAND WITH TRUMP

As we speak right now, America has never been closer to COMPLETE TYRANNY.

But please, Friend, do not give up hope.

With your support, the REAL verdict will be handed down on November 5th, when we TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY AND EXPEL THE DEEP STATE RADICALS.

So please, join my fight and let's send Crooked Joe a message he'll NEVER forget

STAND WITH TRUMP

Together, YOU AND I WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

The reaction by the mainstream news media, pundits, and other such observers (especially the centrists) to Donald Trump’s escalating threats and promises of violence will follow a predictable and tired routine.

There will be claims that this is all “overheated rhetoric," and that Trump is kidding because it is part of his “performance”. As author Masha Gessen warns, always believe the autocrat and authoritarian, they are not kidding. Moreover, there is little to no substantive evidence to suggest that Trump and his agents are just “performing” their threats of violence and revenge. In reality, this strategy of normalizing political violence serves the larger right-wing project to end America’s multiracial democracy (see Project 2025, Agenda 47, and the Red Caesar scenario).

The most naïve will continue to hide behind America’s “institutions” and “national character” and how “the guardrails” and “the rule of law” will supposedly not allow Trump to engage in the types of violence and authoritarian plans he has publicly outlined and promised against his “enemies." The most absurd among such voices will react with “Trump could not become a dictator in 2016, so why be afraid now?” 

Such denials and deflections are foolish and the worst sort of toxic wish-casting and hope-peddling. At this point in the Age of Trump anyone with a public platform who says such things should not be taken seriously because they are functioning as useful idiots who are paving the way for the end of the country’s democracy and the ascent of Dictator Trump and his successors’ dictatorship(s).

Some more “sober” and “realistic” voices will intervene that yes, Donald Trump is saying increasingly dangerous things, but his MAGA followers are greatly exaggerated in their willingness to fight and die for him and the neofascist cause. In many ways, this is self-soothing talk. A range of experts on political violence, national security, and democracy are continuing to warn that the threat of violence by Trump’s MAGA people and other members of the right-wing is very serious and should not be underestimated.

More critical voices will suggest that Trump is using the strategy known as “stochastic terrorism”, where through repetition and coded suggestions political violence takes place but the leaders and other agents can then hide behind a veneer or plausible deniability. That is imprecise. As seen with these fundraising emails and other communications, Donald Trump and his propagandists are now basically commanding, in a clear and direct fashion, the MAGA people and other foot soldiers to engage in acts of violence and terrorism.

And there are basic legal questions here as well. Should someone convicted of a felony, like Donald Trump, be allowed to freely make such threats and incitements to violence – including attacks on Judge Merchan and other members of law enforcement and the courts?

I have been tracking Donald Trump’s emails and other communications for more than eight years. In a recent essay, I observed that he has hit a new bottom with his horror politics strategy and its emphasis on serial killers, murder, and other graphic violence. I was incorrect. Following his felony conviction, Donald Trump and his propagandists will only get worse. 

We will look back at these months before the election and Donald Trump’s sentencing in July (especially if he is put in prison) as being relatively good and normal times as compared to what is going to happen next.