I will never understand how people think a supreme judicial body with the power to hear whatever cases it wants for whatever purposes it wants, with the full ability to constrain or expand its decision to whichever procedural or substantive matters it so desires and bound largely only by a 221 year-old document and the things that the court itself has said can be non-activist.
Conservative judges are activists. Liberal judges are activists. You don't get a case in front of the Supreme Court unless a majority of the justices has something they want to say about the issue or issues in front of them. If the Supreme Court wasn't an activist institution, the only cases that would ever get heard were 9-0 clear findings of error on the part of the appellate judges. It's slightly clever branding, but otherwise an ultimately pointless label; to call any member of the Supreme Court "activist" is to call a member of the Supreme Court "Your Honor".
In a column for the conservative Bulwark, longtime attorney Philip Rotner explained that, based upon recent events, the most likely reason Donald Trump might serve time in jail will be due to his "fake elector scheme."
Noting a recent flurry of subpoenas that were issued in the past week to officials in multiple states who were part of the scheme to replace their states' actual electoral votes with their own based on fraudulent election claims, the attorney said the Department of Justice is following the correct trail if they want to indict the former president.
As Rotner wrote, it seems like Trump has continually avoided paying for his crimes, but, if he had to put money on it, that streak will end with charges over the election theft gambit.
"The phony elector scheme is now looking more each day like—wait for it—Trump’s Watergate. Yes, Nixon was an incumbent while Trump is out of office, but consider the parallels: Federal investigators are aggressively on the case, once again assisted by a relentless press, and public congressional hearings are again generating one stunning revelation after another," he wrote. "Over a two-day period last week, at least nine people in four different states reportedly received federal grand jury subpoenas in connection with the fake elector investigation. The recipients included not only some of the phony electors themselves but also 'aides to Mr. Trump’s campaign.' Federal agents also executed search warrants directed at the chairman of the Nevada Republican party and the party’s secretary."
The attorney added that these developments, combined with the focus on Trump attorney John Eastman, who was recently on the receiving end of a pre-dawn raid by the FBI, are extremely bad news for the former president.
As he notes, recent testimony from GOP officials undercuts the ability of Trump to say he had no knowledge of the scheme.
"First, he can’t convincingly argue that he didn’t know about the scheme or that he didn’t participate in it. Ronna McDaniel’s testimony has foreclosed that potential defense. Second, assuming that future evidence corroborates Trump’s knowledge of and participation in the scheme, none of his standard defenses will work here," he wrote before adding, "Perhaps Trump will try, as Rolling Stone reported last week that he is considering whether to throw John Eastman under the bus. But the facts, at least as they have come to light so far, suggest that Trump was himself aware of and involved in the scheme. And he can’t seriously argue that he relied on legal advice from Eastman or others that forging election certificates and passing them off as official documents wasn’t illegal. That’s absurd on its face."
"Trump’s all-purpose master defense — 'But I truly believed the election was stolen' — won’t work here either. Belief that an election was tainted by fraud, no matter how deeply held, wouldn’t excuse the crime of forging election certificates and attempting to pawn them off as official government documents. To the contrary, it would only establish that Trump had a strong, if tortured, motive to commit the crime," he added before concluding, "Nobody has ever made any money betting that the long arm of the criminal law will finally reach out and grab Donald Trump. But if Trump is eventually indicted for any crime in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, odds are this will be the one."
A host on the right-wing Newsmax network belittled Rudy Giuliani's claims that he was assaulted at a Staten Island grocery store.
The former New York City mayor called in to host Greg Kelly's prime-time program from a rally for his son's gubernatorial campaign, and they discussed an incident Sunday afternoon at a ShopRite, where an employee approached Giuliani, tapped him on the back and called him a "scumbag."
"I'm going to show the people what happened and you tell me, because let me see the video if you don't mind, uh, this person with the hand on your back, I've got to be honest -- it doesn't look that bad," Kelly said. "But I understand that looks can be deceiving."
The district attorney downgraded charges for employee Daniel Gill to third-degree assault, third-degree menacing, and second-degree harassment over the caught-on-camera confrontation inside the supermarket, but Giuliani insisted he could have been seriously injured.
"You know that that was that was the woman who was rubbing my back, not the guy," Giuliani said, as Kelly chuckled. "Are you watching? So the woman, that woman, uh, gave a statement to the police and the guy hit me so hard that she herself almost fell from the reverberation of it. She's a city worker. There's a second-grade detective there, that's the lady who helped me."
Kelly, who had been making skeptical and amused faces as Giuliani spoke, told the former mayor he was glad he hadn't been injured.
"Alright, good, that that makes sense," Kelly said. "Well, look, I'm sorry you were roughed up."
Under pressure to respond forcefully to the Supreme Court's decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday said the White House is not currently discussing the idea of using federal property to ensure access to abortion services for those living in states that have banned or are moving to ban the procedure.
Asked specifically about the proposal during an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Harris initially dodged the question, saying the Biden administration is looking to "do everything we can to empower women to not only seek but to receive the care where it is available."
When Bash followed up, Harris said the idea is "not right now what we are discussing."
"We are 130-odd days away from an election, which is going to include Senate races," Harris added. "Part of the issue here is the court is acting, and now Congress needs to act."
The vice president did say the White House is exploring options to guarantee that pregnant people have "access to the medication they need" and "freedom of travel" as Republican-controlled states look to restrict their residents' ability to obtain abortion care across state lines.
After Harris' interview aired, an unnamed White House official toldInsider that "while this [federal lands] proposal is well-intentioned, it could put women and providers at risk."
"And importantly, in states where abortion is now illegal," the official added, "women and providers who are not federal employees could be potentially be prosecuted."
Several prominent Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), have called on the Biden administration to urgently and creatively use all of the federal resources at its disposal—including property—to provide access to abortion in Republican-led states where it's now outlawed.
Eight states, including Texas and Oklahoma, enacted total abortion bans almost immediately after the Supreme Court's right-wing majority handed down its ruling ending Roe, and others will soon follow as reproductive rights groups attempt to fight back with lawsuits and mass mobilizations.
Before Harris' interview aired Monday, Warren suggested that the Biden administration could move to set up Planned Parenthood outposts on the edges of national parks. Utah, Texas, and South Dakota are among the Republican-led states where such a strategy could be deployed—almost certainly sparking legal pushback from GOP officials.
"They could put up tents, have trained personnel—and be there to help people who need it," Warren told the Washington Post. "It's time to declare a medical emergency."
During a Friday rally in New York City, Ocasio-Cortez urged the Biden administration to "open abortion clinics on federal lands in red states right now," an effort that would likely involve utilizing Defense Department and Veterans Affairs facilities.
The New York Democrat characterized such a move—one of several she's urging the administration to take—as "the babiest of the babiest of the baby steps."
As Vox's Li Zhou explains, "Because federal lands aren't subject to states' civil laws and there's room to interpret criminal laws, clinics could theoretically establish themselves on places like military bases without having to deal with a state's bans."
Zhou cites Khiara Bridges of U.C. Berkeley's Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, who said last month that "even though the land is inside the border of a state, it wouldn’t be governed by the laws of a state."
The Supreme Court's ruling on Friday forced a number of clinics in GOP-dominated states across the country to cease operations, leaving many people seeking abortions confused about their options as trigger bans took effect.
In states such as Tennessee, trigger laws won't become active for several weeks, causing a chaotic scramble among providers and patients. In states where abortion services are now prohibited, people may be forced to turn to international telehealth companies to obtain medication abortion.
At some clinics, including Alamo Women's Reproductive Services Clinic in San Antonio, patients had to be turned away on the morning of the high court's ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
"The Supreme Court made this decision today and, unfortunately, your geographical location affects your bodily autonomy," Andrea Gallegos, the administrator of the San Antonio clinic, told patients waiting in the facility's lobby.
