This morning’s tweets offer a preview of the SOTU because the stunt from the midterms is being repeated by sending more active-duty troops (4,000) to the border. The expression “building a Human Wall” does imply piling up bodies.
There’s more morning delusions as Trump sees a GOP majority in the Senate as “winning the Senate”, in contrast to “losing the House”.
In WWE style, Trump tries for some kayfabe by attacking Schumer:
Of course Trump nominates for Secretary of the Interior a former lobbyist for one of Len Blavatnik’s companies (the same guy who is involved with giving money to Mitch McConnell). If only they’d ask those questions at the confirmation hearings.
They’re not just tweets, Trump’s tweets are “official statements”.
In the past, presidents might have had all kinds of ulterior motives for pursuing or supporting a particular policy, but they didn’t say them at news conferences or on TV. “Until now, the executive branch has been kind of a black box,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law. “Trump is giving courts all kinds of insights that they might not have had in the past.”
And it’s not necessarily clear what courts are supposed to do with those insights. In my conversation with Primus, he seemed skeptical that the Supreme Court would start probing Trump’s motives in future cases. “I think they will continue to insist on acting like they don’t know the president’s motivating attitudes,” he said. If the court were to deviate from its typical practice in response to Trump’s unusual behavior, it could create an awkward situation if the next president is more traditional — does the court revert to its previous practice or stick with the new approach? But staying the course has risks, Primus said — ignoring a president’s motivation could lead to abuses of power in the present and the future.
The travel ban ruling now hangs over cases currently unfolding in the lower courts over DACA (a program originally created by President Obama that protects young undocumented immigrants from deportation), the status of immigrants from Haiti and other countries, and the restrictions on transgender servicemembers. In each, Trump’s tweets or statements are being used as evidence of discriminatory intent by the administration. And the administration’s opponents are arguing that the government’s actions were illegal in at least one of two ways: They violated the procedures set forth for administrative agencies, including a requirement that decision-making not be “arbitrary” or “capricious,” or they violated the constitutional rights of the people who were affected.1
fivethirtyeight.com/...
“Day before #Trump SOTU, his inaugural team is subpoenaed ”
Steve Schmidt works for a company owned by Oleg Deripaska: