We begin today with Charles Blow of The New York Times writing that, like other former presidents, Number 45’s presidency is going through a process of rehabilitation and revision.
His revisionism has worked remarkably well, particularly among Republicans. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in December found that Republicans “are now less likely to believe that Jan. 6 participants were ‘mostly violent,’ less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden’s election as legitimate” than they were in 2021.
This is one of the truly remarkable aspects of the current presidential cycle: the degree to which our collective memory of Trump’s litany of transgressions have become less of a political problem for him than might otherwise be expected. Even the multiple legal charges he now faces are almost all about things that happened years ago and, to many citizens, involve things that the country should put in the rearview mirror.
Indeed, in the same poll, 43 percent of Americans and 80 percent of 2020 Trump voters said they believe that the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol was an event that the country needed to move on from.
Many Americans experienced the Trump years as traumatic, and one of the most bewildering aspects of this year’s presidential race is the way that so many other Americans are disregarding or downgrading that trauma.
Only straight white Christian male trauma is legitimate and must be acknowledged in America. Everyone, in any other group, simply has to “get over” themselves. Those are “the rules,” as Mr. Blow well knows.
Tamar Hallerman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution writes about the high-stakes hearing Thursday involving Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade.
Legal observers believe it’s unlikely that McAfee will drop the criminal charges against the defendants. But they see a potential decision to remove the DA as an almost certain death knell for the racketeering probe.
Preliminary comments McAfee made at a procedural hearing on Monday are already causing some quiet hand-wringing among the DA’s staunchest outside supporters.
The judge said that the facts alleged by Roman “could result in disqualification.” That differs from the opinion of some ethics experts and former prosecutors who said in a recent “friend of the court” brief that an evidentiary hearing wasn’t warranted because Willis didn’t have any conflicts to justify her removal from the case.
Some allies are fretting even more about a new set of allegations from Ashleigh Merchant, Roman’s attorney, that Wade wasn’t truthful in a sworn affidavit included as part of a court filing submitted by the DA’s office. Merchant said she has two witnesses who can rebut Wade’s statements that his personal relationship with Willis didn’t begin until after he was hired on the Trump case and that he has never cohabitated with Willis. (During Monday’s hearing, special prosecutor Anna Cross said the facts Wade swore to in his affidavit are “100% true.”)
Chris Geidner writes on his “LawDork” Substack, summarizing Special Counsel Jack Smith’s response to Number 45’s request for a stay in the presidential immunity case.
The response wasn’t due until Tuesday, Feb. 20, but Smith’s office filed its 40-page opposition on Wednesday evening, highlighting the importance of the case, the need for quick resolution, and the weakness of Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution for acts taken as president.
“The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy,” the special counsel’s office, on behalf of the United States, stated in the opening paragraph of its filing. “A President’s alleged criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transfer of power to his successor should be the last place to recognize a novel form of absolute immunity from federal criminal law.”
[...]
If the court wants to grant Trump’s request for a stay while he seeks further review of his immunity claim, however, the special counsel’s office asked alternatively for the court to grant full review of Trump’s immunity claim now and on an expedited schedule so that oral arguments could be held in March.
It is an aggressive filing that urges the court to take the case, the charges, and the timeline seriously.
Hannah Natanson of The Washington Post writes about a Rand Corp. report saying that teachers are scaling back on lessons about political and social issues.
A report by Rand Corp. found that of a nationally representative sample of 1,400 K-12 teachers, 65 percent reported restricting instruction on “political and social issues.” This is nearly double the percentage of teachers who reported actually being subject to state laws that restrict discussion of race, sex and gender in the classroom, according to the report. A Washington Post analysis found that, as of late 2022, legislators in 25 states had passed 64 laws restricting what teachers can teach and what children can do at school. More than two dozen similar laws passed in 2023.
Teachers’ most common reason for curtailing some forms of education, the report found, was their worry that school or district leaders would not support them if parents expressed concerns — and teachers working in politically conservative areas were more likely to censor themselves.
[...]
The data comes as the nation faces a fraught debate over how we teach and tell our history — and describe our society — to the youngest generations of Americans. Since the coronavirus pandemic, at least 14 states have enacted 18 laws erecting guardrails around what children can learn about race, The Post found, while at least eight states have enacted 15 laws censoring or prohibiting discussion of gender identity, sexuality and LGBTQ subjects.
So much for the proper teaching of government and civics, I suppose.
Yuval Abraham of +972 Magazine reports that Israeli intelligence is trying to monitor the information that the Palestinian Authority is providing the United States about West Bank settler violence.
Sources in Israeli intelligence told both sites that they have been tracking materials passed through private channels by the PA to the Office of U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (USSC) in Jerusalem in order to “understand what the U.S. knows about settler violence.” The intention, they explained, is not to act against the perpetrators but to prevent the collected information from “developing into sanctions.”
U.S. officials, who confirmed that PA officials have been sending a great deal of information to the USSC on incidents of settler violence, told +972 and Local Call that this information contributed in part to President Joe Biden’s decision earlier this month to impose sanctions against four settlers known to have attacked Palestinians and left-wing Israeli activists. The officials added that the information led in recent months to the inclusion of dozens of other settlers on a “blacklist” prohibiting their entry into the United States.
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“The preoccupation with what the Americans know stems from [the understanding] that they intend to do something with this information,” the source continued. “Everyone here knows the name Fenzel. The Americans are demanding accountability from Israel, and the Israelis are finding themselves embarrassed. The fact that we are being asked to look for the materials indicates that Israel has no good answers.”
Shane Harris, Ellen Nakashima, and John Hudson report for The Washington Post about intelligence reports regarding new Russian space weapons—and the efforts of one Republican congressman to disclose the classified defense information to the public.
The Russian government has experimented with the use of nuclear explosions or directed energy to disable satellites, according to one U.S. official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. Experts have raised concerns that a nation could detonate a nuclear weapon in space to interfere with satellites through the emission of radiation.
Russia also has tested antisatellite weapons. In 2021, after it launched a missile from Earth that destroyed a Soviet-era satellite, a senior U.S. military official warned that Russia was “deploying capabilities to actively deny access to and use of space by the United States and its allies.”
A day of fevered speculation about what the supposed space-weapon might be was triggered by an unusual and cryptic public statement Wednesday by a leading member of Congress, who urged lawmakers to review classified information about what he called a “serious national security threat.”
Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the nature of the threat or the country supposedly wielding it.
The other members of the Gang of Eight (including Trumpian lapdog Speaker Mike “Moses” Johnson) seem to not like that Rep. Turner said even this much.
Finally today, Nick Aspinwall of Al Jazeera reports that former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte and current Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. are feuding—and current Philippine vice president Sara Duterte-Carpio is now caught in the middle of the feud between her father and her boss.
Former President Rodrigo Duterte accused Marcos last month of using drugs and publicly floated the idea of a military coup to unseat the president. Last week, he proposed the secession of Mindanao, a southern island and the base of his political power.
Marcos initially responded by saying his predecessor’s judgement had been impaired by his use of the synthetic opioid fentanyl, which he previously admitted to using to recover from a motorcycle accident. He also said the call for a separate Mindanao was “doomed to fail”, and his national security adviser threatened to use force to quell any secession attempts.
The ongoing political spat has put Duterte-Carpio in a bind, threatening to unravel the alliance crafted by her and Marcos before they were elected in 2022.
She has recently split with the president on several issues, including the government reopening peace talks with communist rebels and an ongoing investigation of her father’s deadly drug war by the International Criminal Court.
Everyone try to have the best possible day!