This week was supposed to begin (for us, since we measure weeks from Friday to Friday) with a Donald Trump rally in North Carolina last Saturday. After being cooped up in a courtroom all week listening to the lawyers haggle over jury selection, Trump was going to hit the campaign trail again to bask in the glow of adulation from his MAGA faithful (even the Proud Boys showed up!). That was the plan, at any rate.

But then the rally had to be cancelled at the last minute...

[...wait for it...]

...due to stormy weather.

[pause for rimshot]

We do apologize for that, but we thought it was worth starting off with some humor, after a particularly dry and seemingly-endless week of courtroom proceedings. Also, political humor is about to hit the spotlight this weekend, with the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner (also known locally as the "Nerd Prom"), so we thought we'd get in on the fun early.

The big story of the week, of course, was the Trump trial. This may be true until it concludes, in fact, so we may be in for weeks and weeks of breathless courtroom reporting as all the witnesses are called in turn. As of this writing, we're already on the third witness, but the big ones to come will be Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels -- which is when the media coverage will go into an absolute frenzy.

But this week there was an even bigger legal story, since on Thursday Trump's lawyers argued before the Supreme Court that a United States president should be able to order the military to stage a coup against the American government -- without facing any sort of criminal charges for doing so afterwards. Yes, you read that right.

But let's pull back and look at the bigger picture, because no matter what the court eventually decides they will have given Trump a big win -- precisely what he wanted, in fact. Because their dithering will have eaten up at least half a year, and their ruling seems almost guaranteed to delay the process of trying Trump in a court of law (for his role in the January 6th attempted insurrection) all the way beyond the presidential election.

Special Counsel Jack Smith tried to avoid this, it bears mentioning, but the Supreme Court refused. Smith tried to get the high court to jump into the fray very early on -- before the appellate court even heard the appeal -- since it was plain to see that the case was eventually going to end up at the Supreme Court anyway. They refused this request. Then after a month was wasted, the appellate court ruled. Their ruling denied all of Trump's insane theories of "presidential immunity," just as the trial judge had done previously. Trump's team filed a further appeal, and the Supreme Court wasted a few weeks before announcing they would hear the case -- in another seven weeks' time. So yesterday's hearing finally happened, after two more months of delay, and from all indications it looks like the court will hold its ruling back until the very end of its term -- in late June or perhaps even early July.

When they could have ruled on all of this back in January.

Their ruling will split some legal hairs about what presidential acts can be later criminally prosecuted, and this hair-splitting will be sent back to either the appellate court or the trial judge. This will set off a round of arguments about each and every "act" Trump performed, as his lawyers argue that they are all "official" acts of the president, rather than personal or purely political acts designed to keep him in office (even though the election had gone against him). All of this arguing will chew up more time, and then whatever the result is will likely be subject to an appeal -- where it may even wind up back at the Supreme Court. The high court could then decide that next year is early enough to hear the case again, meaning they could wind up wasting more than an entire year before the court case ever actually begins.

Even if an appeal doesn't gum up the works again, the haggling over official acts versus political acts will almost certainly waste so much time that the trial can't even begin until after the election.

Which is precisely what Trump wanted all along, of course.

To sum up (to use a lawyerly term), the Supreme Court is bending over backwards to prove the truth of the old adage: "Justice delayed is justice denied." And there's nothing anyone can do about it.

But let's get back to Trump's current criminal trial... one curious thing in the New York case is the judge's seeming reluctance to even address the issue of Trump repeatedly and continually violating the gag order the judge slapped him with before the trial actually began. The prosecution filed a motion to have Trump fined the maximum amount for each violation and even warn Trump that he could be incarcerated for contempt if he keeps it up. Astonishingly, the judge scheduled a hearing on the issue a week into the future. This hearing was held Tuesday morning, but no ruling from the judge accompanied it. Trump keeps violating the order, the prosecution keeps filing more motions pointing out each violation, and yet the judge has yet to even admonish Trump for any of it. The latest round of this was the prosecution pointing out more violations to the judge -- who decided that he'd hold another hearing. Next Thursday.

What is the problem here? The judge certainly isn't going to chuck Trump in jail to begin with, and he may not even fine him for the violations. All he'd have to do is tell Trump: "OK, you get a free pass for everything up until now, but from this point forward, here is what is going to happen if you continue to violate the gag order...." Then Trump would be on notice and would automatically trigger sanctions if he continued. But for some inexplicable reason, none of this has happened. The judge hasn't done anything, and now it looks like he won't until next Thursday, at the earliest -- all while the trial continues to unfold.

In another New York courtroom, meanwhile, a judge rejected Trump's motion to wipe out the $83 million judgment against him in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case. Trump wanted this amount wiped out or reduced and asked for a whole new trial. The judge shot all of it down, meaning Trump's still on the hook for the $83 million, at least for now.

Out in Arizona, an indictment was handed down for not just all the "fake electors" who falsely tried to claim Donald Trump won the state in 2020 (and fraudulently sent in documents to Washington that stated all of this), but also for all the Trump henchmen who put the whole nefarious scheme together. Trump was not charged -- yet -- but merely named as an "unindicted co-conspirator." For those of you who are keeping count, this is now the fourth state which has charged people in the fake electors scam (the other three are Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada). In addition, Wisconsin still has an open investigation but hasn't indicted anyone yet.

One thing that will become more and more apparent as time goes by is that while Donald Trump is tied up in court, Joe Biden is out there campaigning in all the swing states. Biden seems to be having fun on the campaign trail, whether he's cracking jokes about Trump or slamming him for the current situation with abortion rights. Trump, to coin a phrase, seems to be campaigning "from his basement." As mentioned, his rally last week was cancelled and he spent the one day off from court this week (Wednesday) out on the golf course (which Team Biden gleefully pointed out). Trump reportedly has no rallies planned for this weekend either. He is trying to squeeze in a little campaigning as he goes to and from the courthouse (he has visited a bodega and a construction site), but this is all happening in New York -- a state which is impossibly out of reach for Trump. So it's not doing his campaign a whole lot of good, to state the obvious.

Perhaps as a result of this dynamic, Biden now seems to be inching up in the polls. This could also just be the fact that more and more people have finally accepted the fact that we are indeed going to get a repeat of the 2020 election, with Biden running against Trump. But for whatever reason, it's good news for Team Biden.

Biden is also doing his job as president (while Trump bizarrely pretends to be, by handing out "keys to the White House," even though he doesn't live there anymore). This week the bill to provide military aid to Israel and Ukraine finally got to Biden's desk for his signature, which is a real victory for Biden (the fact that it made it through a very divided Congress). It did also include a ban on TikTok, but one that won't go into effect until after the election (if it even does). Trump immediately tried to hit Biden on the TikTok ban, which is a complete flip-flop for him, since he issued an executive order in 2020 which tried to do exactly the same thing. This order was scathing, accusing "the Chinese Communist Party" of wanting to use TikTok data to "track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage." So Trump was for the ban before he was against it (because Biden is now for it too). Typical.

House Speaker Mike Johnson is (so far) clinging to his job, which may be challenged next week by Marjorie Taylor Greene. She's miffed that things are actually getting done in Johnson's House, and so far she's got two cronies who have also said they'll vote to oust Johnson from the speaker's chair. This may set up an extraordinary situation where Democrats are the ones to save a Republican speaker's job, so stay tuned for that interesting showdown....

There was some other good political news out of Arizona this week, as three Republicans in their state house chamber voted with all the Democrats to repeal the Draconian abortion ban from the Civil War era. This was always the smart move -- just get the whole thing off the table so it wouldn't haunt Republicans running in November -- but up until now Arizona Republicans had refused to take this obvious off-ramp. They've already got enough votes in the state's senate to pass the repeal (which could happen next week) and the Democratic governor has said she will sign it.

And a final bit of good news -- George Santos, after raising precisely zero dollars in the first quarter of the year, has announced he will not be making an independent run to return to Congress after all. Late-night comedians everywhere were saddened at the news, since it is so easy to write Santos jokes, and they were looking forward to doing so right up to November. Santos will be missed (by the joke-writers, at the very least).

 

Representative Summer Lee had an impressive victory in the Pennsylvania primary this week, easily defeating her challenger. Lee is a member of the Squad who supports a cease-fire in Gaza, and this contest was supposed to be close but in the end the race was called for Lee almost immediately -- and when the votes were counted Lee won by a whopping 21 points. So she deserves at least an Honorable Mention for her decisive victory.

Moving on to our main award... all week long we've wanted to write about this, but other subjects seemed more immediate. It's not that we particularly have anything to add to the story, but we really did want to run a headline that could have easily appeared at some point during the Civil War: "Union Victory In The South." But alas, we never got the chance, so we'll just mention it in passing....

Just after this column went to press last Friday, the news broke that the United Automobile Workers had scored a surprisingly strong victory. The workers in a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee had voted -- by an overwhelming margin -- to join the Union. Which is the first time workers in any southern state have voted to form a Union in an automakers' factory since the 1940s. So it was a big deal.

The U.A.W. has been trying to unionize the South for a long time now, with not a whole lot of success. But after its stunning victories over the big American automakers last year, the dynamic seems to be changing. Even six Republican governors from the South couldn't turn the tide (they released a statement right before the election full of dark warnings about lost jobs, which failed to move the needle at all). The Volkswagen workers voted by almost 3-to-1 to form their own Union.

What might have contributed to their success was the fact that Volkswagen itself wasn't stridently pushing against the concept. This factory was reportedly the only Volkswagen plant in the world that wasn't unionized, so it's not exactly a new thing to the company. Fresh off this victory, the U.A.W. is now moving ahead to bring their Union to other auto factories across the South, so we'll have to see whether they can build on their success or not. But either way, this week's vote was an important milestone for organized labor in general and should be celebrated.

So while he isn't a Democratic politician, we're comfortable with bending the award rules a bit (the U.A.W. has endorsed Joe Biden again, which is close enough for government work, as they say...) to hand this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week to Shawn Fain, the head of the United Automobile Workers. Not only did he emerge victorious from the strike launched last year but he is now building on that victory by aggressively trying to get as many auto factories in the country unionized as possible. This week's victory in Chattanooga was historic, but hopefully it won't be the only one the U.A.W. chalks up in the South this year -- which would be even more historic.

[Congratulate United Automobile Workers President Shawn Fain via the Union's contact page, to let him know you appreciate his efforts.]

 

This is the flip side of our Honorable Mention this week. Here's the story:

The Associated Press called the race in favor of [Representative Summer] Lee, who is in her first term in Congress, shortly after the polls closed Tuesday night. Her challenger, Edgewood borough council member Bhavini Patel, attracted support from Pennsylvania's richest resident, Republican billionaire Jeffrey Yass.

. . .

Patel had one significant source of financial support: Yass, whose super PAC, the Moderate PAC, laid out six figures on attack ads against Lee. Yass is a Republican megadonor who is reportedly on the shortlist for treasury secretary in a second Trump White House. For much of the primary, the Moderate PAC's founder, Ty Strong, tried to hide the extent of Yass' financial support. At one point, Strong insinuated that a sizable portion of the PAC's money came from two Pittsburgh developers. In reality, Yass' most recent donation, of $800,000, was 160 times larger.

Running as a stalking horse for a Republican billionaire is beyond disappointing, really. We are glad that Lee easily dispatched her challenger, but knowing who funded that challenger pretty much made Bhavini Patel the shoo-in candidate for this week's Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week.

[We could not locate an official contact page for Bhavini Patel, and as a rule we do not link to campaign websites even after the election is over, so you'll have to search out contact information yourself if you'd like to let her know what you think of her actions.]

 

Volume 749 (4/26/24)

First, we have to mark the passing of Representative Donald Payne Junior this week, which will leave the House Democrats one more vote down for months (a special election will be called, but it might not happen until November, with the regular election).

Requiescat In Pace.

Most of our talking points this week deal with Donald Trump's legal shenanigans, with a heavy emphasis on what his lawyers argued in front of the Supreme Court. So without further ado, let's just get right to it.

 

   Wouldn't it be nice?

File this under "what might have been," we suppose.

"It seems like a day doesn't go by where Donald Trump and all his minions aren't facing some new criminal charges against them, or defending them in court, or scheming to delay having to face the music in different courtrooms. Which all leads me to wonder: wouldn't it have been nice if all of this had happened last year? Wouldn't it have been nice if prosecutors had moved just a wee bit faster? Wouldn't it have been nice if the court system had actually moved faster than a glacier on Ambien? The American people may go to the polls this November without confirmation that Donald Trump is guilty of putting the country's national security secrets at risk or whether he feloniously tried to orchestrate a coup to remain in power. It has taken over three years to get to where we are now, and it may be another year before all the dust begins to settle. If all of these prosecutors had moved faster, we could have had plenty of time for all of Trump's delay tactics to fail and we could have seen all these cases tried by now. I mean, it really shouldn't take an entire presidential term to prosecute an ex-president for any crimes he committed while in office."

 

   Um... no

The Supreme Court hearing this week provided plenty of astonishing moments when Trump's lawyers argued some rather jaw-dropping things. These next three talking points deal with the biggest of these.

"So Trump's lawyers just argued in front of the Supreme Court that an American president should be allowed to order the United States military to stage a coup d'état to stay in power, without ever having to face criminal charges for doing so. They even argued that this is what the Founders intended. So... men like George Washington and John Adams would have been OK with a future president using the military to attack the federal government? Um... no. Just: no. That is so laughably ridiculous it is hard to even put into words how dangerous a concept it truly is. But that is exactly what Trump's lawyers just argued before the highest court in the land."

 

   Impeachment first? But what if...

This argument is just as ridiculous.

"Trump's lawyers have also be arguing that no president -- even after he leaves office -- can ever be charged with any crime for anything he did while in office if he hasn't first been impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted in a trial in the Senate. But Republicans also believe that no one who has left office can ever be impeached. So what would stop any president from doing all sorts of illegal things in his last months in office? He or she would know that Congress wouldn't move fast enough to impeach, so this would be some sort of window of opportunity for any president to do anything. And we've already seen how bad this can get -- we've already had a president in the final months of office attempt to overthrow a free and fair election. If the Supreme Court rules for this absurd position (which is nowhere to be found in the Constitution), then it would give every president a big green light to do absolutely anything they wanted, just before they left office. That is an unbelievably dangerous thing to even contemplate, as we've already seen."

 

   This law also applies to the president

This is equally as laughable.

"Trump's lawyers -- and at least one Supreme Court justice -- also seemed to be arguing that all the laws that are on the books simply do not apply to any president unless there is a clause contained within the law which explicitly states: 'this law also applies to the president.' That is an astonishingly radical concept. Presidents can murder people and that's fine because the murder statute doesn't state that presidents can't murder people? Presidents can take bribes and obstruct justice and attack the federal government and do any number of other crimes but they can never be charged with any of them unless that specific phrase appears? That is insane. But it is precisely what Trump's lawyers are arguing."

 

   So far as I know...

This one is from Mitt Romney, of all people. Guess he's getting in on the comedy fun this week too! While being interviewed Romney was asked about Trump's current trial and came up with a great talking point:

I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump's character. And, so far as I know, you don't pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you.

 

   With a cherry on top

This one stems from an archaeological find.

"Workers who are restoring George Washington's home Mount Vernon made a rather interesting discovery recently. They dug up two intact glass bottles from an old storeroom floor which contained 'pits, stems, sodden cherries, and gooey residue' in them. These were judged to be around 250 years old, from when Washington lived there. Which should remind everyone of the old fable of Washington and the cherry tree, obviously. In 250 years we went from 'I cannot tell a lie' to suffering through four years where the United States president was incapable of telling the truth."

 

   The world's smallest violin

This is really cheesing Trump off, from all reports. So rub it in!

"Donald Trump keeps begging his supporters to turn up in enormous crowds in Manhattan to show their support for him outside the courthouse where he is being criminally tried. But the pro-Trump demonstrations keep shrinking. A sorry handful of people waste their days yelling at the hundreds of media reporters, but it seems that's all Trump can manage. Trump has always had an inferiority complex about crowd size, but this is a new realm of pathetic, even for him. Even Trump desperately begging people to show up hasn't changed anything. Pretty soon it'll be down to just one crazy guy standing there shouting MAGA slogans while everyone else just laughs at him. Poor Donnie... can't even raise a crowd in the double digits!"

-- Chris Weigant

 

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Cross-posted at: Democratic Underground