Jamie Dupree/Regular Order:
TRUMP DOCUMENTS. The Justice Department told a federal judge late Tuesday night that the feds sought a search warrant for former President Donald Trump's Florida home only after it became apparent that Trump's team had 'likely concealed and removed' highly classified documents being sought by the National Archives, and ‘that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.’
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STORAGE ROOM. While Trump's lawyers had assured FBI officials during a June meeting that no classified materials were located outside a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, the court filing said that wasn't true - as more documents were discovered in Trump's office desk during the search.
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MATERIALS. "The classification levels ranged from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information," the filing stated. The feds included a photo taken at the time of the raid.
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PHOTO. The SECRET/SCI document in the foreground has an 'HCS' marking - which means it contains human source intelligence, one of the most sensitive products of the U.S. Intelligence Community.
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CONGRESS. Democrats were outraged by the photo and the new details about the evidence. "It is long past time to arrest and prosecute Donald Trump," said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA).
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COURT FILING. You can read through the details yourself at this link.
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[IANAL but] apparently Trump's legal strategy is being led by Al Capone.
"They can't get you on insurrection, so give them obstruction, sir."
And Twitter is on it:
And in other news:
Anna Wolfe/Mississippi Today (March 2021):
‘A profound betrayal of trust’: Why Jackson’s water system is broken
How a shrinking city, aging infrastructure and racism left thousands of Jacksonians without water for weeks.
Many Jacksonians lacked access to clean drinking water long before the most recent storm. In fact, on a good day, officials advise pregnant people and children under five not to drink from the tap, a phenomenon that’s been the case for the last five years…
The city is faced with two colliding but distinct funding problems: One, the city’s infrastructure is only getting older and past administrations did not plan for inevitable future capital investments, as is true in many aging cities. Two, the loss of customer base and pervasive billing troubles have left the water department without a feasible revenue model for regular operations and maintenance.
Jennifer Rubin/WaPo:
The next scary matter for Trump’s lawyers: The crime-fraud exception
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter found in a case concerning the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoena of attorney John Eastman’s emails that while some materials might be protected, “the crime-fraud exception applies when (1) a ‘client consults an attorney for advice that will serve [them] in the commission of a fraud or crime,’ and (2) the communications are ‘sufficiently related to’ and were made ‘in furtherance of’ the crime.”
Carter added: “It is irrelevant whether the attorney was aware of the illegal purpose or whether the scheme was ultimately successful. The exception extinguishes both the attorney-client privilege and the work product doctrine.”
Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner/Substack:
Dear Teachers
You nurture the flames of democracy
One of the great sadnesses of our current age is how politics has polluted so much of our public discourse and spread into realms that once seemed free of partisanship. That this occurs at a time when much of the Republican Party has adopted the posture of a bully and is gripped by extremist ideology and attacks on truth and justice makes it all the more dangerous and dispiriting.
Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the battlegrounds that our schools have become. We are living in an age when the number of books being banned is on the rise and the willingness to confront America’s complicated history is on the decline. We see intolerance worn as a badge of toughness, while inclusion, the great promise of what public education can be, is treated as weakness. We see a concerted effort to take over school boards, especially in deeply conservative areas, with true believers in the culture wars eager to inflict their small-mindedness, bias, and mean-spirited ideology on shaping how young minds are taught.
Teaching, already an underappreciated profession in this country, is becoming an even less appealing line of work. We have educators who have spent decades in the classroom now forced to look over their shoulders, wondering whether the books on their shelves or their carefully honed lesson plans will run afoul of the new draconian mandates. And we have young idealists with freshly minted teaching certificates wondering whether they can impart their excitement and new ideas into the students before them.
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
From a Republican 'tsunami' to a 'puddle': Why the forecast for November is changing
"It feels to me to be more like a shallow red puddle that we're walking through, rather than a tsunami of sorts," says Republican strategist John Thomas.
The key to the change in expectations is a shift in the issues motivating the electorate. Earlier this year, the debate between the parties centered on inflation, the economy, crime, immigration and
President Joe Biden's stalled legislative agenda in Congress -- all issues that motivated the Republican base and alienated many swing voters from Democrats. But a series of dramatic events over the past few months have elevated an entirely different set of issues: gun violence, threats to democracy, climate change and, above all,
abortion rights.
Brian Klaas/Atlantic:
The Realist’s Weapon in the Fight for Democracy
Coaxing despots into a cushy exile is sometimes the best option.
For decades, hawks in Washington and London pushed for a military solution to democratize dictatorships. They got their way with the Iraq War. Now Afghanistan is back in Taliban control, Libya is a disaster, and the notion of regime change by force has few advocates. Economic sanctions, which often squeeze vulnerable civilians more than the elites (who can take the hit), rarely live up to their lofty expectations.
Bangor Daily News:
Maine high court says referendum blocking CMP corridor was unconstitutional
Maine’s high court ruled Tuesday that a referendum blocking the controversial $1 billion hydropower corridor by an affiliate of Central Maine Power Co. running from the Canadian border through western Maine was unconstitutional.
In a 39-page ruling, five members of Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court said the portion of the November 2021 referendum that retroactively applied to the corridor project, which had previously secured a number of approvals, was unconstitutional.
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The result was a messy split that still leaves the project in limbo. The court’s decision sends the project back to the business court for further proceedings. Massachusetts, which is paying for the corridor, has given CMP and its allies until the end of 2023 to fulfill the project that will help that state meet its clean energy goals and supply power to the regional grid.
