Opinion

Sorry, Mr. President: Adding cops will not reduce crime

Politicians love some law-and-order policies. They seem to believe tough-on-crime rhetoric magically attracts that elusive center-independent voter. And sure enough, as the midterms approach, Joe Biden is promising to dump tons of cash on cops.

But the more-cops-yields-more-votes default is flawed.

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Trump puts a target on the FBI: Cincinnati gunman shows danger posed by an endless supply of dupes

The main reason that Donald Trump is forever turning Republican campaign events and conservative conferences into fascistic rallies featuring two-hour stemwinders is that he's a champion narcissist with a vampiric need to feed off the adulation of blockheads. But a major secondary reason is what happened on Thursday, when a deranged Trump supporter named Ricky Shiffer fired a nail gun at the FBI offices in Cincinnati, Ohio, before getting killed in an hours-long standoff with the police.

As reporters covering right-wing extremism swiftly documented, before much of it was taken down, Shiffer was all wound up by Trump's lies about the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago Monday, lies that have been amplified and validated by right-wing media outlets like Fox News and much of the GOP establishment.

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How Merrick Garland turned the tables on Trump — and made Trump's supporters look like fools

After Monday's FBI search of Donald Trump's home at Mar-a-Lago, Trump blasted out the news of the unprecedented intrusion on a former president's residence. He asserted that it was politically motivated.

But late on Thursday, the Washington Post reported that "sources familiar with the investigation" say that "classified documents relating to nuclear weapons" were among the materials the FBI search was seeking. The Post's sources did not say whether the agents found such materials.

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This time Trump is trapped — and afraid

There is no limit to the depths Donald Trump will explore to beg for money.

A day after the FBI executed a search warrant on his home at Mar-a-Lago, the former president sent out emails to his supporters saying the FBI had "raided" his home, "broke into" his safe and possibly planted evidence. Was he upset? Maybe. Was he innocent? Who cares? But he was open about needing money to help battle "the corrupt left," whatever that means. And so, dear friends and neighbors, the preacher in the big pop-up tent is going to pass around the hat, and if you'd very graciously give everything you have, the billionaire who needs your money would much appreciate it. By the way, would you like a new shirt with Donald's portrait? He's got those too.

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Why the Republican insurgency will not be a second civil war

A pattern emerged in the hours after the FBI lawfully searched the Florida home of the former president. Indeed, it was deeply familiar.

It goes something like this.

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GOP's victim complex goes into overdrive as Trump unleashes a new wave of petulance

The day after Donald Trump dramatically declared he was the "persecuted" victim of an "FBI raid," a debate erupted over how big a deal this really is. As Trump fundraised off his imaginary victimhood, some folks (including myself, full disclosure) assumed this must be important, for the FBI to go to all this trouble. Other folks insisted Trump is just stubbornly clinging to otherwise irrelevant classified documents, and that the "raid" was closer to the government coming to fetch an overdue library book.

Late Tuesday, reports from both the Washington Post and the New York Times pointed to the latter theory, with the Times noting that the "agents carried out the search in a relatively low-key manner," even avoiding wearing their FBI jackets. If that turns out to be true, then the situation is disappointing, but somehow even more sinister. It would suggest Trump is hanging onto these documents for the same reason a serial killer keeps jewelry from his victims, as a trophy to caress whenever he wishes to reminisce over his destructive power and gloat about how he got away with it all.

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Merrick Garland's case against Donald Trump is probably airtight

First, the news. The FBI executed a search warrant on Monday morning of the former president’s home in Florida. Federal agents were looking for secret government documents that Donald Trump had taken with him after leaving the White House in January 2021.

The FBI’s search warrant arose from a grand jury investigation that was opened after representatives of the National Archives last January had gone to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve 15 boxes of documents.

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On Mar-a-Lago search, GOP sides against the law with a lawless ex-president

It will be some time before the nation knows exactly what the FBI was looking for, and what it found, during Monday’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and resort. But the known factors so far all point to a strong presumption of legitimacy for the operation. FBI Director Christopher Wray is a Trump appointee. Attorney General Merrick Garland is known for his caution. A judge had to affirm the probability of finding evidence of criminality before granting the warrant. And Trump himself has a documented history of mishandling classified records. Yet Republicans from Florida...

Rep. Ted Budd’s troubling embrace of a Trump co-conspirator

If a person can be judged by the company they keep, then a politician can likewise be judged by the support they choose to accept. So it’s particularly concerning to see someone who tried to overturn a legitimate presidential election fundraising for a man who wants to be North Carolina’s next senator. Conservative attorney and activist Cleta Mitchell will host a fundraiser on Aug. 15 for Rep. Ted Budd, staunch Donald Trump ally and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, is scheduled to appear at the fundraiser as a special guest. Mitchell is one of several ...

Trump panics and runs the Alex Jones playbook

There's a critical factor to keep in mind regarding the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago, the resort hotel Donald Trump resides in Florida: Getting a federal warrant is not child's play.

As former federal prosecutor and current defense attorney Ken White noted in a lengthy Twitter thread following the raid, the "feds do not seek search warrants lightly." As White explained, such warrants generally require "probable cause to believe that the specified location has the specified evidence of a specified federal crime." This one, in particular, would have been combed over by multiple high-ranking authorities, including Attorney General Merrick Garland himself. Crucially, while we the public do not know the details of what is almost certainly one of the most careful and detailed warrants imaginable, Trump himself does, because the subject of the search is given the warrant.

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GOP opposition to climate-and-drug bill highlights party's twisted priorities

Senate Democrats over the weekend passed legislation to help industry and individual Americans move to cleaner energy, make corporations pay their fair share in taxes and lower prescription prices for struggling seniors, all while lowering the deficit and, potentially, inflation. Republicans’ sole contribution to this historic package was to keep insulin costs outrageously high for millions of diabetics. Voters should remember that contrast in priorities come November. Assuming the House passes the measure later this month as expected, the package that squeaked by in the Senate on Sunday repre...

The day Pete Rose proved he does not belong in baseball. Or anywhere in public.

If there is one compliment that you can give Pete Rose without feeling the need to rinse your soul out with Listerine, it is that he has consistently kept the world informed about how unattractive a human being he really is. There are plenty of celebrities who act one way in public and another in private. Rose? He’s never paid much attention to his surroundings. From his infamous on-field push of umpire Dave Pallone to his long list of off-the-field transgressions (illegal gambling, tax evasion, etc.), Rose has always made it perfectly clear to anybody with an ethical pulse that he was, is, an...

Schumer gets it done: The majority leader delivers for the country when it counts

When the Inflation Reduction Act passed the Senate Sunday afternoon at 3:18 after more than 24 hours of a continuous session that began at noon on Saturday and required 39 separate roll call votes, Chuck Schumer read a long list of his staff that the majority leader said were instrumental in getting the bill (a smaller but still potent reincarnation of Build Back Better) done. The name left off, of course, belongs to a graduate of Brooklyn’s James Madison High School, and we don’t mean Bernie Sanders, who prolonged the long night with five failed roll call votes on his pet causes. Without Schu...