Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Full statement from Trump just emailed out a minute ago:

FlamingLiberal posted:

You know, I used to think that Ted Cruz bending the knee for Trump in 2016 was the most pathetic thing I've seen in politics, but this weird Pence defense of Trump has to be worse

bird food bathtub posted:

I'm a living embodiment of Negatron Prime on these things which I freely admit. Trump's entire legal strategy for decades has been "gently caress you, no" on every single last possible piece of paperwork, punctuation, testimony, and deadline, which then gets seventeen motions filed when it is supposed to happen and three appeals when it happens anyway. I don't see it only lasting 1-3 years. Trump has money, and that's what the courts respect.

Gyges posted:

There is almost no scenario where Trump withdraws from the primaries. Perhaps the key reason he's even running again for the job he hates, is that he's terrified of actually answering for his myriad crimes. He's desperate for the immunity from consequences that the sitting President wields.

Which is even assuming that boring white collar business crimes are enough to turn anyone away from voting Trump in the first place. The most likely outcome of the trial is actually to buttress the support in the primary for Candidate Trump. Everyone on the right, including his handful of electoral opponents, is now all but forced to boisterously decry this "outrageous injustice", and performatively demand to be allowed to protect America's Favorite Martyr President with their own bodies.

Of all the dumbfucks running for the Republican nomination, only Donald J. Trump has the inherent immunity to shame and the carnival barker skills to successfully both defend and demolish an opponent in the same breath. Nobody else is going to successfully build a case against the guy they're forced to repeatedly defend as the greatest and bestest innocent man to ever be framed by Soros.

koolkal posted:

I would expect a Stop the Steal movement and protesters to attack whoever's in the lead.

Which could be funny?

haveblue posted:

Becoming and staying president is a major impediment to any investigations or penalties, so there’s his motivation to stay in the race. He won’t stop running unless he’s dead or legally barred from doing it, and if it’s the latter he’ll be trying to pull strings and weasel around it like he tried in Georgia

Aegis posted:

Sorry if its already been addressed, but is there anyone from the area who can give some insight on what this is all about? The first stories I saw about this say she reps a pretty liberal area and has been aligned with pro-choice causes in the past. What specifically is her angle here?

Youth Decay posted:

There are, um, rumors she is in a relationship with the speaker of the house. I mean it makes more sense than her own justifications as to her sudden extreme shift rightwards.

Silly Burrito posted:

Not all of them.

https://twitter.com/MichaelSteele/status/1644134658253152258?s=20

Name Change posted:

I struggle to think of how you could more shame yourself as an institution or bring down a bigger shitstorm of negative attention from all directions.

Charlz Guybon posted:

I read if they are re-elected they can't be expelled again. Is that right?

FlamingLiberal posted:

This terrible Chudge finally did the thing everyone had been expecting for like a month

https://twitter.com/5DollarFeminist/status/1644467530948390914?s=20

It's being pointed out that this was dumped after 5 PM on Good Friday and that's probably on purpose

FlamingLiberal posted:

I would be extremely surprised if they didn't stay this on appeal, this entire case is nonsense. Also that drug is used for many other things besides abortion.

Randalor posted:

So how do they resolve this? One on one duel at dawn? Rap battle? Baseball game between judicial staff?

haveblue posted:

It goes up the chain of appeals until it hits a court to which both of them are inferior, which issues its own ruling that overrides them. If that court isn’t SCOTUS, it then gets appealed to SCOTUS for a final ruling

Killer robot posted:

If the appeals court for either district says "Nah, our guy's wrong, we agree with the other one" there's no longer any conflict between districts and SCOTUS doesn't yet have to be involved. It can still be appealed further by the parties in either case, but the higher court wouldn't have to take it.

OddObserver posted:

Washington is 9th Circuit, along with CA, OR, NV, AZ, ID, MT (which makes it represent around 30 million more people than second most popular circuit) --- 2nd is NY + CT + NH, 1st is the rest of New England.
2nd does show up a bunch because, well, NYC is in it.

Mooseontheloose posted:

I mean, yes and no. They are still 48% of the vote but the number is declining. I mean, its interesting that the Democrats despite losing in 2022 are outperforming the last few midterms.

Young Freud posted:

The issue with Millennials isn't that they'll slide more to the right, the issue is Democrats sliding more to the right and Millennials disengaging because of that. The Dems absolutely have to have a progressive platform in order to keep them.

aBagorn posted:

i kept reading a bunch of think pieces saying Gen X has swung hard right over the last 10 years

Charlz Guybon posted:

You would think they would get tired of losing eventually

https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1645258292879302668

Kalit posted:

On a brief lookup, it seems in line with what she's said in the recent past and realizes how damaging this issue can be to the Republican party in general.

Mellow Seas posted:

It actually would be really, really bad if "court decisions are optional" became an established precedent and I don't think the reason why is particularly obscure. The problem here is that a judge made an insane ruling, not that other branches are subject to their decisions.

This ruling is not going to go into effect. Chudges don't have enough capture of the judiciary yet and this is going to be stayed by the appellate court, and I honestly doubt the SCOTUS even takes it up because it's so absurd. No need to jump on a "gently caress the courts!!!" grenade that probably won't even be necessary to keep the medication on the market.

e: I think it would be a pretty good idea to try to get the DOJ's action to establish some kind of precedent that a judge can't just overrule the decisions of executive agencies that have been given the authority, by Congress, to make those decisions. Is there a way to get that kind of outcome out of this case before all is said and done? Or is that already the precedent and the Judge just ignored it? IANAL

Byzantine posted:

Which is why they, and we, are hopeless.

InsertPotPun posted:

i mean they spent decades trying to get around the ruling by creating more and more byzantine laws about hospital access and planned parenthood funding etc etc etc to make abortion de facto illegal but...ok...i guess they just accepted the ruling and never tried to get around it except for the decades long conspiracy to install judges to legalize their work arounds?

yronic heroism posted:

Nothing would have stopped McConnell from filling every R president’s Supreme Court nomination.

But it’s apples and oranges because the senate amending its own rules is not a cool zone end to the rule of law thing.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Fox News is in big trouble in their Dominion lawsuit.

First, the judge rejected their motion to dismiss the case and ruled that essentially Dominion had already proved that Fox knowingly lied and the trial was mostly about proving actual malice.

Now, Dominion claims that Fox has withheld evidence - including secret recordings of Rudy Giuliani, Trump campaign officials, and Fox News staff discussing January 6th and how they knew there was no election fraud, but were discussing ways to encourage the belief that there was mass fraud.

They also tried to hide an email from Fox News Brett Bair who was trying to organize airing a Fox News special investigation on election fraud because he thought it might help with the lawsuit and build evidence. It is unclear if Brett Bair is incredibly dumb (beyond being dumb enough to put that in writing) or just incredibly cynical and loyal to the company.

The judge overseeing the case says there is serious evidence that Fox withheld it intentionally and is considering appointing a special master to review all of Fox's electronic records for evidence that may be relevant.

https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1646192255886139392
https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1646192493866762244
https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1646192875707809797

Gatts posted:

My dude do you know how expensive a 5 Guys burger is?

It would have cost the same $5 billion for the border wall so it was one or the other

nine-gear crow posted:

DeeplyConcerned posted:

Let me put it this way. If a presidential candidate came along and supported everything you support, promised to fight like hell to bring those things about, then won the primary would you support them?

Now, imagine that person wears a popped collar, cargo shorts and golf shoes . Would you still support them? If so, what would you think about people who criticize that person based on the popped collar?

because I know if i was getting my policies enacted, i'd be laughing all the way to my free healthcare account. I wouldn't give a gently caress if he looked like Michael Moore and sounded like Ron DeSantis. She could be as unlikable as Hillary. I might even pop my collar once in a while if I thought it would trigger the cons.

I'm willing to forgive a multitude of sins in order to get my policies enacted. I think frothing at the mouth racists feel the same way about racism.

Clarste posted:

If it makes you feel any better (it shouldn't) a lot of Republicans also think they're voting for the lesser evil.

Google Jeb Bush posted:

I'm just operating on the assumption that default doesn't happen, the same way I'm operating on the assumption that I won't be taken out by a deorbiting toilet seat tomorrow. Exactly how it doesn't happen will be interesting.

quote:

The Supreme Court on Friday protected access to a widely used abortion drug by freezing lower-court rulings that placed restrictions on its usage.

As a result, the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug mifepristone and subsequent actions that made it more easily accessible will remain in place while appeals play out – potentially for months to come.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly dissented.

Failed Imagineer posted:

You have to admit though that he represents the sort of generalized cursed aura that permeates the North Shore

Blue Footed Booby posted:

Wikipedia has evangelicals as being outnumbered by mainline Protestants and Catholics, combined for Pew Research in 2014, individually by the Public Religion Research Institute in 2020. Just for the record.

Madkal posted:

Regarding the loneliness thing I was biking around the other day and went by a park and saw a group of maybe 20-30 people playing games and cheering each other on and such and I thought "man I really would like to be doing what they are doing, being out with a whole group of people just having fun" and then I realized that:

a. It was probably a church group and I am not even Christian and I know my synagogue doesn't do things like that
b. None of my friends would ever organize a thing like this. Hell, some of my friends became complete shut ins during covid and have had to resort to therapy to gain the confidence to leave the house and be around people again.

I used to organize a softball team in a rec league years ago before covid but I decided it was time to let someone else do the organizing and the whole thing fell apart because no-one else wanted to organize. It became a thing where I felt that the only way I would get to see people or do fun things is if I was the one making the effort to reach out and do something and it just got so tiresome after a while that the last year I just gave up on keeping in touch with people. I wouldn't say my friends are lazy (well they are) but it definitely feels like people are caught up in their own stuff and don't make time for socializing anymore, and to try do so feels like way more effort and stress than it is worth.