J Michael Luttig and Laurence H. Tribe/The Atlantic:
The Constitution Prohibits Trump From Ever Being President Again
The only question is whether American citizens today can uphold that commitment.
As students of the United States Constitution for many decades—one of us as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, the other as a professor of constitutional law, and both as constitutional advocates, scholars, and practitioners—we long ago came to the conclusion that the Fourteenth Amendment, the amendment ratified in 1868 that represents our nation’s second founding and a new birth of freedom, contains within it a protection against the dissolution of the republic by a treasonous president.
This protection, embodied in the amendment’s often-overlooked Section 3, automatically excludes from future office and position of power in the United States government—and also from any equivalent office and position of power in the sovereign states and their subdivisions—any person who has taken an oath to support and defend our Constitution and thereafter rebels against that sacred charter, either through overt insurrection or by giving aid or comfort to the Constitution’s enemies.
David French/The New York Times:
Appeasing Donald Trump Won’t Work
While I believe the court should intervene even if the hour is late, it’s worth remembering that it would face this decision only because of the comprehensive failure of congressional Republicans. Let me be specific. There was never any way to remove Trump from American politics through the Democratic Party alone. Ending Trump’s political career required Republican cooperation, and Republicans have shirked their constitutional duties, sometimes through sheer cowardice. They have punted their responsibilities to other branches of government or simply shrunk back in fear of the consequences.
In hindsight, for example, Republican inaction after Jan. 6 boggles the mind. Rather than remove Trump from American politics by convicting him in the Senate after his second impeachment, Republicans punted their responsibilities to the American legal system. As Mitch McConnell said when he voted to acquit Trump, “We have a criminal justice system in this country.” Yet not even a successful prosecution and felony conviction — on any of the charges against him, in any of the multiple venues — can disqualify Trump from serving as president. Because of G.O.P. cowardice, our nation is genuinely facing the possibility of a president’s taking the oath of office while also appealing one or more substantial prison sentences.
Ross Douthat/The New York Times:
Subjecting Trump to prosecution will subject the law to politics
This isn’t a judgment on the legal merits of any of the Trump indictments. It doesn’t matter how scrupulous the prosecutor, how fair-minded the judge; to try a man, four times over, whom a sizable minority of Americans believe should be the next president, is an inherently political act. And it is an especially political act when the crimes themselves are intimately connected to the political process, as they are in the two most recent indictments...
You can see all that and still support Trump’s prosecutions as a calculated but necessary risk — in the hopes that having him lose twice, in the courts and at the ballot box, will re-establish a political taboo against his kind of postelection behavior and on the theory that this outcome is worth the risk that the whole strategy will fail completely if he wins.
If you see things that way, good; you see clearly, you are acting reasonably. My concern is that not enough people do clearly see what’s risked in these kinds of proceedings, that many of Trump’s opponents still regard some form of legal action as a trump card — that with the right mix of statutory interpretation and moral righteousness, you can simply bend political reality to your will...
Then here is the point that I, a non-scholar, want to make (though I should note that Segall makes it as well): Even if Baude and Paulsen were deemed correct on some pure empyrean level of constitutional debate, and Salmon Chase or anyone else deemed completely wrong, their correctness would be unavailing in reality, and their prescription as a political matter would be so disastrous and toxic and self-defeating that no responsible jurist or official should consider it.
Paul Krugman/The New York Times:
Biden and America’s Big Green Push
For the new industrial policy has already generated a huge wave of private investment in manufacturing, even though very little federal money has gone out the door so far. Why?
A new blog post from Heather Boushey of the Council of Economic Advisers argues that Biden’s industrial policy helps solve what she calls the “chicken and egg problem,” in which private-sector actors are reluctant to invest unless they’re sure that others will make necessary complementary investments.
The easiest example is electric vehicles: Consumers won’t buy E.V.s unless they believe that there will be enough charging stations, and companies won’t install enough charging stations unless they believe that there will be enough E.V.s. But similar coordination issues arise in many other areas, for example in the complementarity between battery and vehicle manufacture.
Even before seeing Boushey’s post, I’d been thinking along similar lines. In particular, the ongoing investment surge reminded me of a once-popular concept in development economics, that of the Big Push. This was the argument that you needed an active government role in development because companies wouldn’t invest in developing countries unless assured that enough other companies would also invest.
While Chitown Kev highlighted this Krugman piece yesterday, this is a different selection (and a follow-up).
Yarimar Bonilla/The New York Times:
Enrique Tarrio and the Curious Case of the Latino White Supremacist
Yet however much Mr. Tarrio may identify with whiteness, it seems that in his time of need he turned to the Afro-Cuban gods. On the site formerly known as Twitter, Denise Oliver-Velez, a professor and former Young Lord and Black Panther, chastised his use of religious beads, commonly used among practitioners of Santería, as a “falta de respeto,” or disrespect. “Looks like the Orishas want him to go to prison,” she writes. If the Justice Department gets its way he will certainly have ample time to contemplate the paradoxes of his choices.
You might have seen this piece, but IMHO Denise Oliver-Velez cannot possibly get enough credit for her insight and, well, her life and work.
The Washington Post:
Trump to release taped interview with Tucker Carlson, skipping GOP debate
Former president Donald Trump intends to skip the first Republican presidential primary debate in Milwaukee on Wednesday and instead plans to post a prerecorded interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that will be released that night, according to a person briefed on the matter.
Trump advisers said the interview had already been recorded. It is not yet clear where the interview will appear. Carlson has started a show on X, formerly called Twitter, but Trump sees the platform as a rival to Truth Social, which he helped create.
The coward won’t even do a live interview.
Matt Robison video from Blue Amp:
Josh Barro/”Very Serious” on Substack:
Memo to Ron DeSantis: Be Smarter
The most embarrassing aspect of his super PAC's debate prep memo isn't the content. It's that he hobbled himself with a moronic campaign structure.
The memo’s content is embarrassing. It feeds narratives about DeSantis being aloof and unlikable (an anecdote about his family should involve “showing emotion,” the memo urges) and about him being too afraid to directly attack the candidate who’s beating him: Trump. Christie, whose career highlight involved dismantling an opponent for being canned and consultant-driven in a debate, is sure to beat DeSantis over the head with it.
But the strangest thing about these memos is that we’re able to see them at all.
Here’s your hot polling from the weekend:
And:
But:
I expect Trump to win Iowa (and the nomination) but I expect his lead to shrink.
By the way, a lot of this is Fox News-fed Republicans convincing themselves that Joe Biden is a doddering old man whom even Trump/anyone can beat.
They’re in for a rude awakening.
Of course he can win. But a dose of reality is bracing.