COUP #1
ICYMI, my post the other day about the Judicial Coup that has taken place with the capture of the Supreme Court by the Republican Party continues to be relevant. The latest ruling from the Gang of Six essentially guts the ability of the EPA to deal with Climate Change and enforce a multitude of other regulations.
I’ll skip analysis of the legal justification the Gang of Six used, except to point out it overturns decades of established law (again) and creates a legal precedent that can be used to gut the ability of any Federal agency to do its job. Six people who will never face the voters are rewriting America to suit the radical religious right and the corporatist free marketeers.
Digby links to a Politico article The Supreme Court’s Faux ‘Originalism’ which goes into the bogus legal arguments the Gang of Six are employing to roll back decades of law.
“Originalism has been the reigning constitutional theory of legal conservatives since the election of Ronald Reagan,” a contributor to the National Review wrote recently, with glowing approval. The theory, which views jurisprudence as frozen in time, flatly rejects the idea of the Constitution as a a living and evolving document and instead demands that we interpret its provisions exactly as the framers intended.
As Digby notes, the ‘history’ they are relying on is history according to Hannity and Carlson.
COUP #2
There are several additional must-reads over at Digby’s Place. Server updates may be making access glitchy, but here’s the quick summary.
Two posts connect the dots.
Tom Sullivan points out that Trump and his co-conspirators knew that January 6 could be violent and were aware of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. Trump knew before his speech that there were armed people in the crowd.
IF he had gotten to the Capitol, what are the odds he was going to confront Congress backed up by an armed mob to “Take back America” as he had promised the mob? It certainly suggests that the reason he sat sulking in the White House for hours refusing to end his “American Carnage” is that he was hoping the mob would be able to pull it off even without him.
Sullivan points out that the Select Committee did not show all of the cards in its hand the other day, that there may even more damaging material they have not revealed.
[Marcy] Wheeler bullet-points facts that point to what the committee has yet to explore publicly:
- Both Engel and Ornato had warnings of plans to occupy buildings
- Hutchinson linked Rudy Giuliani in advance of the attack to both militias that attacked the Capitol
- Ornato discussed these warnings in advance with Mark Meadows, who pushed Hutchinson away twice during the early moments of the attack
- In spite of foreknowledge of a plan to occupy buildings and the involvement of militias, Ornato nevertheless continued to plan to take Trump to the Capitol
The other post by Tristero asks a critical question. Who paid for all of it?
By J6, I mean the entire, comprehensive plot in 2020 and early 2021 to install Donald Trump as an American dictator in the manner of Orban or Putin. As far as we know, based on information discussed during the Jan 6 hearings, this enormous plot entailed the following, at the very least:
- Subverting multiple elections
- Subverting investigations
- Subverting the courts
- Subverting state and federal legislatures
- Massive and relentless propaganda and misinformation campaigns
- Subverting law enforcement
- Subverting the military
- Mob-style one-on-one confrontations intended to intimidate
- Murderous violence
As incredible as it sounds, the hearings strongly suggest that none of this was haphazard or unintended. It was all planned. If one piece of the plan didn’t work, there were multiple fall backs. They were planning for all contingencies.
emphasis added
...I think many people believe that the violent part of the J6 plot was funded by individuals themselves or through dozens of small donations and that the plans for a non-violent “legal” coup were executed by pro bono lawyers (with Trump possibly paying for some of that himself). While these financial streams surely contributed, I think J6 was so expensive and so carefully co-ordinated that I really doubt that at the core levels of the strategy the funding of this gigantic scheme was left to the vagaries of grass-roots fundraising and the whims of a billionaire with a reputation for stiffing everyone.
It is my sincere hope that the Committee and Justice will, as they say, follow the money. This was an incredibly costly endeavor; uncovering how it was funded will go a long way towards understanding how on earth it happened — and how to plan for the inevitable future coup attempts.
emphasis added
“Follow the money” will never not be good advice.
We are experiencing what Rudiger Dornbusch observed about economic events — but it also applies to the current political situation.
‘The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.“
Buckle your seat belts and hang on. It’s going to get even bumpier ahead.