Today’s headline is part of a famous “Casablanca” quote that resonates: “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.”
And it certainly covers Donald Trump’s legal liability.
Try to overthrow the government and interfere with the legal transition of power, did you?
The Washington Post:
Trump says he received a target letter in federal Jan. 6 investigation
The target letter and potential indictment further ensnares Trump in unprecedented legal peril as he campaigns as the front-runner to be the 2024 Republican nominee for president.
Oh, well. FAFO.
ABC News:
Special counsel informs Trump he is target in probe of efforts to overturn 2020 election
The development indicates another indictment of Trump could be imminent.
The target letter mentions three federal statutes: conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States, deprivation of rights under color of law, and tampering with a witness, victim or an informant, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
There are no additional details in the letter and it does not say how the special counsel's office claims Trump may have violated the statutes listed, sources said.
Republicans are who they are. Kevin McCarthy is a small man petrified of crossing Trump because he knows that will cost him his speaker’s gavel, and nothing matters more to him. Not the law, not democracy. Nothing matters more than that gavel. And it shows.
And in other news (as the pundits gather their thoughts), NBC News:
Michigan attorney general charges 'false electors' over efforts to overturn the 2020 election
Sixteen people forged documents and claimed to be "duly elected and qualified electors" for Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel said.
Presidents are technically voted in by slates of electors from each state who cast their votes for the candidates selected by their states’ popular votes. In December 2020, as Trump tried to overturn the results of the election, his allies readied alternative slates of electors in several states.
They appear to be the first charges filed against fake electors.
The announcement came the same day Trump said he has been notified that he is the target of an investigation by a Washington-based grand jury examining the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark:
The One Big Thing Everyone Misses About 2024
No one alive has ever seen an election like this one.
The 2024 election has no modern precedent and this unprecedented difference (1) Is not properly appreciated, and (2) Explains why the race has been so stable.
This thing is so obvious that you’re going to dismiss it out of hand. But I want you to work through it with me:
No one living has seen an election in which two presidents have run against one another.
And that changes everything. Let me explain.
Miami Herald Editorial Board:
DeSantis’ dangerous personal army is in turmoil. Let’s hope it stays that way
Well, that didn’t take long.
A little more than a year after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was activating the state guard for the first time in 75 years — a move that had government overreach written all over it — the civilian volunteer force is fast becoming an embarrassing mess at best and a powerful personal militia at worst.
An organization that started out with a non-military disaster-response mission has expanded into a group that can be deployed to protect “people and borders from illegal aliens and civil unrest.” Some recruits are dropping out because the training is more militaristic than they expected. The state is looking for the program’s third leader in eight months. Recent stories by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times and The New York Times documented the disarray and tensions.
Far from being a FEMA-style group, the new force is being trained by the state’s National Guard in a shortened and looser — some critics have called it slapdash — form of boot camp, with camouflage uniforms, shaved facial hair, rappelling with ropes, woodland navigation with a compass and military-style command. When the first class of recruits graduated in June, DeSantis issued a congratulatory press release calling them “soldiers.”
POLITICO:
Most Brits reckon Brexit has failed, new poll finds
It’s not just Nigel Farage feeling the Bregret.
Arch-Brexiteer Nigel Farage thinks Brexit has failed. Almost two-thirds of Brits seem to agree with him.
According to a YouGov poll released Tuesday, 63 percent of Britons now consider Brexit to have been more of a failure than a success — the latest piece of research which points to anti-Brexit sentiment in the U.K. three years on from the country’s formal exit from the EU.
Just 12 percent of those asked see Brexit as more of a success than a failure, while 18 percent said it was neither.
Houston Chronicle:
Exclusive: Texas troopers told to push children into Rio Grande, deny water to migrants, records say
Officers working for Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative have been ordered to push small children and nursing babies back into the Rio Grande, and have been told not to give water to asylum seekers even in extreme heat, according to an email from a Department of Public Safety trooper who described the actions as “inhumane.”
The July 3 account, reviewed by Hearst Newspapers, discloses several previously unreported incidents the trooper witnessed in Eagle Pass, where the state of Texas has strung miles of razor wire and deployed a wall of buoys in the Rio Grande.
According to the email, a pregnant woman having a miscarriage was found late last month caught in the wire, doubled over in pain. A four-year-old girl passed out from heat exhaustion after she tried to go through it and was pushed back by Texas National Guard soldiers. A teenager broke his leg trying to navigate the water around the wire and had to be carried by his father.
More to come on this one, I am certain.
Jill Lawrence/The Bulwark:
Joe Manchin Is Attacking Democrats As If He’s a Republican
It’s the best way to win another Senate term . . . if he doesn’t run for president.
My theory based on the evidence to date is that ultimately, when Manchin announces his decision at year’s end, he will tell us he is running for re-election. But first he will tease state and national Republicans with the prospect of an open Senate seat and/or a bipartisan No Labels ticket that polling shows would drain votes from President Joe Biden and elect the GOP nominee. If that is Donald Trump, it’s no stretch to predict disaster will follow.
Cliff Schecter on Trump’s authoritarian bent: