News bits: What's up with John Roberts?; The potential for violence ratchets up; Etc.

A Supreme Court decision last week, Allen v. Milligan, was about voting rights. It surprised a lot of people who expected the six authoritarian Republican Supreme Court justices to continue attacking voting rights. In an unexpected turn of events, chief justice John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh voted to protect black voters from further gerrymandered disenfranchisement in Alabama. Some partisans immediately seized on this as evidence the Republicans on the Supreme Court were not just predictable authoritarian Republican partisans. 

For what it's worth, I instantly dismissed the pro-voting rights decision as an aberration in view of the decades of blatant hostility that Republican Party elites, specifically including John Roberts, have shown toward voting rights. The Milligan decision was a misdirection to keep criticism of the court down. 

And don't forget that in Milligan, four of the six radical Republicans voted to blow another massive hole in voting rights. Only God knows what Kavanaugh got in return for his vote with Roberts.

40 second video clip

Classic clip from 1980: Paul Weyrich, "father" of the right-wing movement and co-founder of the Heritage Foundation, Moral Majority and various other groups tells his flock that he doesn't want people to vote. He complains that fellow Christians have "Goo-Goo Syndrome": Good Government.  As of 2007, Weyrich continued to gave weekly strategy sessions to Republicans.

Weyrich: "As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." 

The Guardian writes about the Allen v. Milligan decision:

The US supreme court ruling delivered on Thursday by John Roberts marks a departure for the chief justice from his 40-year battle to whittle down racial equality protections enshrined in the crowning glory of the civil rights movement.

Roberts wrote the Allen v. Milligan opinion himself, forging an unconventional 5-4 majority with the support of the three liberal-leaning justices plus the partial backing of the conservative Brett Kavanaugh. The chief justice’s decision to cling closely to precedent and avoid a sweeping reframing of voting rights law took supreme court observers by surprise.

In his Milligan opinion, the chief justice pledged himself to providing “a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record”. He upheld a lower court ruling that had objected to the electoral maps drawn up by Alabama’s Republican-dominated legislature.

A key to understanding Roberts’s intentions is that he plays the long game. He likes to present himself as a bridge-builder who represents the moderate center of American jurisprudence. He is also highly sensitive to the slump in public trust in the supreme court that has followed embarrassing revelations about Clarence Thomas’s luxury holidays paid for by a Texan billionaire.

In that context, Roberts has shown himself willing to bide his time before making some of his more extreme interventions.

The pattern is seen perhaps most clearly with voting rights, where Roberts has since the early 1980s expressed profound doubts about the role of federal law in forwarding equal representation for Black citizens. Exactly 10 years ago, he delivered Shelby County v. Holder, which punched a gaping hole in the Voting Rights Act, Lyndon Johnson’s landmark legislation that was perhaps the pinnacle of the civil rights movement.

Roberts pretends he is a bridge-builder representing the moderate center of American law. That he presents himself that way is true. But that presentation is a bald faced lie. It is a sham. Roberts is playing the long game here. In due course, he will continue limiting voting rights. In time if he lives long enough, he will cement into American law unrestrained power of (i) the radicalized, authoritarian Republican Party, (ii) Christian nationalist theocracy, and (iii) radical brass knuckles capitalism.  

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it unless Roberts shows a lot more evidence that he is actually serious about (i) “a faithful application of our precedents and a fair reading of the record”, and (ii) defense of democracy, the public interest and civil liberties, especially voting rights.   

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From the Treasonous Coup Plotters Files: The NYT writes about signs that violence is increasingly possible in response to Trump's indictment: 

Kari Lake publicly inciting violent 

insurrection and a coup

(lock her up)

The former president’s allies have portrayed the indictment as an act of war and called for retribution, which political violence experts say increases the risk of action 

“If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me,” said Kari Lake, the Republican former candidate for governor of Arizona. “And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the N.R.A.” [Is that a threat of violence??]

The federal indictment of former President Donald J. Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere ahead of his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday.

In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Mr. Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Mr. Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.

The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Mr. Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.

One can only wonder. Is the delightful authoritarian insurrectionist Ms. Lake auditioning for Trump's pick for Vice President? Hm . . . . sure sounds like it. 

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On the campaign trail: The NYT writes:

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday cast both his indictments by prosecutors and his bid for the White House as part of a “final battle” with “corrupt” forces that he maintained are destroying the country.

The apocalyptic language came in Mr. Trump’s first public appearance since the 38-count federal indictment against him and a personal aide was unsealed — and in a state where he may soon face additional charges for his efforts to pressure Georgia election officials to overturn his 2020 election loss there. It was Mr. Trump’s second indictment in less than three months.

“This is the final battle,” Mr. Trump said in the speech to several thousand activists, delegates and members of the media who gathered in Columbus, Ga.  

“Either the Communists win and destroy America, or we destroy the Communists,” the former president said in Georgia, seeming to refer to Democrats. He made similar remarks about the “Deep State,” using the pejorative term he uses for U.S. intelligence agencies and more broadly for any federal government bureaucrat he perceives as a political opponent. He railed against “globalists,” “warmongers” in government and “the sick political class that hates our country.”

Mr. Trump also described the Justice Department as “a sick nest of people that needs to be cleaned out immediately,” calling the special counsel, Jack Smith, “deranged” and “openly a Trump hater.”  

And he attacked by name Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., who is weighing criminal charges against Mr. Trump, calling her “a lunatic Marxist” and accusing her of ignoring violent crime and instead spending all of her time “working on getting Trump.”  

The crowd cheered and laughed throughout, and when he mentioned Democrats, the hall was filled with boos and jeers. At one mention of Hillary Clinton, a woman started chanting, “Lock her up!”  

Mr. Trump and his advisers are keenly aware that the Republican base overwhelmingly supports him in his legal battles and reflexively dismisses whatever facts prosecutors produce. The Trump campaign team has exploited that dynamic and put their opponents in the presidential primary in a lose-lose situation: Either they begrudgingly defend and praise the front-runner or they suffer the wrath of millions of voters.

That speaks for itself. 

Q: I can feel the power of the dark speech rising, can you? 

Yeah, but will my destiny be good or bad?

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From the Job-Creating Entrepreneur Files: The Huffpost writes:

Elise Stefanik Is Already Raising Money (For Herself) Off Of Trump's Indictment

The House GOP conference chair is urging people to donate to the “Official Trump Defense Fund,” but virtually all of that money would go to her campaign

“President Trump has been indicted on federal charges,” reads the subject line of a Thursday-night email from Team Elise, Stefanik’s joint fundraising committee.

“Biden’s weaponized federal government has handed President Trump BOGUS CHARGES over the ‘Boxes Hoax,’” says the email. “They are just trying to keep him out of the White House in 2024. President Trump needs ALL of his loyal supporters to stand with him at this crucial time.”

“RUSH A DONATION TO OUR OFFICIAL TRUMP DEFENSE FUND TO STAND WITH PRESIDENT TRUMP,” the email shouts.

It’s the Boxes Hoax. It’s Boxgate!!