U.S. Politics Independance Day edition

[Zorral]

Just now, DireWolfSpirit said:

There's a slow moving train wreck afoot.

Never fear; the pace here in the US picks up every single day -- everywhere including My City.

 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Ooopsie, I thought I had posted that in the Covid thread lol.

Too late now.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

If authenticated, this is may be the closest thing we get to a smoking gun:

Quote

Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.

The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.

They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.

Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.

By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race. A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force” to ensure a Trump victory.

Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.

The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine. Incidental details come across as accurate. The overall tone and thrust is said to be consistent with Kremlin security thinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

If authenticated, this is may be the closest thing we get to a smoking gun

Smoking gun for what?  Since at least the Mueller report was released the Trumpist line has been there was no collusion, not that the Russians didn't interfere on the Trump campaign's behalf.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Smoking gun for what?  Since at least the Mueller report was released the Trumpist line has been there was no collusion, not that the Russians didn't interfere on the Trump campaign's behalf.

We know that most if not all of the activity taking place in Russia has some degree of Putin’s approval, but I never expected to see an actual document signing off on the interference with his John Hancock on it.

[argonak]

I wouldn't put it past Putin to have released such a document just to further destabilize the USA political discourse.  

It won't hurt Trump though.  He could start shooting people on live TV in Maralago and not lose any votes.  His following is literally a cult at this point.

[Martell Spy]

Manchin meets with Texas Dems and says he wants pared-down voting rights bill

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/politics/manchin-texas-democrats-voting-rights/index.html

Quote

 

Washington, DC (CNN)Sen. Joe Manchin, a key vote in the effort to pass federal voting rights legislation, on Thursday said he and a group of Texas House Democrats, who have fled their state in an effort to block restrictive voting bills, have come to a "total agreement" on what they want, which is "basically to protect voting rights."

Since arriving in Washington on Monday, Texas Democrats have sought meetings with members of Congress to urge them to pass federal voting rights legislation, including the For the People Act, the sweeping Democratic voting and election bill shot down by Senate Republicans last month.

Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia, has for weeks been at the center of the conversation on voting rights because of his opposition to eliminating the filibuster. Removing the legislative hurdle would allow Democrats to pass legislation with a simple majority.
After meeting with members of the Texas delegation, Manchin said the next step is to put together a pared-down bill that focuses solely on protecting the right to vote and the procedure of voting.

"We work with the Voting Rights Act that we had, started in 1965, and what we've evolved into, and basically make a piece of legislation, one piece of legislation that protects the rights of voting, the procedure of voting, democracy, the guardrails on democracy, that's all. And there shouldn't be a Republican or Democrat should oppose it," Manchin said.

Asked why he thinks Republicans would support a pared down bill, Manchin said: "You know why? Because they've had a bill that's 800 pages long, they've had everything thrown at them. Let's get back to the basic rights of voting, protecting voting rights."

 

 

[argonak]

15 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Manchin meets with Texas Dems and says he wants pared-down voting rights bill

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/15/politics/manchin-texas-democrats-voting-rights/index.html

"We work with the Voting Rights Act that we had, started in 1965, and what we've evolved into, and basically make a piece of legislation, one piece of legislation that protects the rights of voting, the procedure of voting, democracy, the guardrails on democracy, that's all. And there shouldn't be a Republican or Democrat should oppose it," Manchin said.

Asked why he thinks Republicans would support a pared down bill, Manchin said: "You know why? Because they've had a bill that's 800 pages long, they've had everything thrown at them. Let's get back to the basic rights of voting, protecting voting rights."

 

I'm always impressed at how people can say this sort of baloney with a straight face.  Manchin missed out on a hollywood career, because I don't think he's stupid enough to believe that nonsense.

[Zorral]

29 minutes ago, argonak said:

I'm always impressed at how people can say this sort of baloney with a straight face.  Manchin missed out on a hollywood career, because I don't think he's stupid enough to believe that nonsense.

In the this nation historically, most of 'his type' have believed the basic right to vote that needed protection was for them, to be protected against the Others who were voting

The NY Times's (paywall) Jamelle Bouie, has a piece up today that delineates this history in both the North and the South after Grant's administrations.  It wasn't only Jim Crow, to deny African Americans post-Appomattox from voting, but variants, shall we say? of restrictive qualifications to access the ballot box -- and inclusion on the ballot itself -- across the entire country to keep immigrants and women from voting.  These all stood until the era of LBJ.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/16/opinion/republicans-democrats-voter-suppression.html?

 

Quote

 

. . . .Biden is right. Americans today are witness to a ferocious attack on voting rights and majority rule. And as he points out, it is as focused on “who gets to count the vote” as it is on “who gets to vote.”

Biden is also right to say, as he did throughout the speech, that these attacks are “not unprecedented.” He points to Jim Crow and the “poll taxes and literacy tests and the Ku Klux Klan campaigns of violence and terror that lasted into the ’50s and ’60s.”

For obvious reasons, Jim Crow takes center stage in these discussions. But we should remember that it was part of a wave of suffrage restrictions aimed at working-class groups across the country: Black people in the South, Chinese Americans in the West and European immigrants in the North.

“The tide of democratic faith was at low ebb on all American shores after the Grant administration, and it would be a mistake to fix upon a reactionary temper in the South as a sectional peculiarity,” the historian C. Vann Woodward wrote in “Origins of the New South, 1877-1913.”

For as much as Jim Crow dominates our collective memory of voting restrictions, it is the attack on suffrage in the North in those last decades of the 19th century that might actually be more relevant to our present situation.

The current assault on voting is a backlash, in part, to the greater access that marked the 2020 presidential election. More mail-in and greater early voting helped push turnout to modern highs. In the same way, the turn against universal manhood suffrage came after its expansion in the wake of the Civil War. . . .

. . . . Out of this furious attack on universal male suffrage (and also, in other corners, the rising call for women’s suffrage) came a host of efforts to purify the electorate, spearheaded by progressive reformers in both parties. Lawmakers in Massachusetts passed “pauper exclusions” that disqualified from voting any men who received public relief on the day of the election. Republican lawmakers in New Jersey, targeting immigrant-dominated urban political machines in the state, required naturalized citizens to show naturalization documents to election officials before voting, intentionally burdening immigrants who did not have their papers or could not find them.

Lawmakers in Connecticut endorsed an English literacy requirement, and California voters amended their state Constitution to disenfranchise any person “who shall not be able to read the Constitution in the English language and write his name,” a move meant to keep Chinese and Mexican Americans from the ballot box. The introduction of the secret ballot and the polling booth made voting less communal and put an additional premium on literacy — if you couldn’t read the ballot, and if no one was allowed to assist, then how were you supposed to make a choice?

If suffrage restriction in the South was a blunt weapon meant to cleave entire communities from the body politic, then suffrage restriction in the North was a twisting maze of obstacles meant to block anyone without the means or education to overcome them.

There were opponents of this effort to shrink democracy. They lost. Voter turnout crashed in the first decades of the 20th century. Just 48.9 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 1924 presidential election, an all-time low. “There were fewer Republicans in the South because of Jim Crow voter suppression, and fewer Democrats in the North because of the active discouragement of working-class urban immigrant voters,” the historian Jon Grinspan notes in “The Age of Acrimony: How Americans Fought to Fix Their Democracy, 1865-1915.” “The efforts of fifty years of restrainers had succeeded. A new political culture had been born: one that had been cleaned and calmed, stifled and squelched.”

It would take decades, and an epochal movement for civil rights, before the United States even came close to the democratic highs it reached in the years after Appomattox. . . .

 

 

[Wilbur]

Good to know that Captain Moroni was represented at the January 6 Insurrection.  It is always key for the Cult of Trump to have a leader, and I can think of no better than Captain Moroni.

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2021/07/15/nathan-wayne-entrekin-cottonwood-dressed-captain-moroni-gladiator-raid-capitol/7986464002

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Ugh, DACA has been ruled illegal by a federal judge, blocking all future applicants. Haven't seen what will happen to those already under the program. 

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Ugh, DACA has been ruled illegal by a federal judge, blocking all future applicants. Haven't seen what will happen to those already under the program. 

They'll be ok for now.
 

Quote

 

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/16/987132269/federal-judge-rules-daca-unlawful-but-current-recipients-safe-for-now?t=1626479707674

Federal Judge Rules Against DACA Program But Current Recipients Are Safe For Now

[...]

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen ruled in favor of nine conservative-led states, including Texas, blocking the Biden administration from accepting new DACA applicants – saying the program is not legal.

However, the ruling allows for immigrants currently protected by the program to keep their status while the case goes through the appeals process.

 

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

47 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

They'll be ok for now.

For now is the troubling part. This is obviously going to the SC, and the default assumption has to be that they won't support it. 

[DMC]

Well, DACA has survived court challenges in the past.  Most notably (and recently) with Homeland Security v. Regents (2020), wherein the court ruled the Trump administration's attempt to rescind the program was "arbitrary and capricious," violating the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).  While that case was fundamentally different, it can provide some guidance.

First, obviously, the vote was 5 to 4 and one of those five (Ginsburg) has been replaced by Barrett.  Second, while I'm no lawyer, if the Trump administration's directive rescinding the program was arbitrary and capricious, basic logic suggests so would a federal judge's order. 

Third, and most importantly, in Thomas' dissent he argued the court should review the lawfulness of the DACA program itself - and subsequently obviously argued it was not.  That dissent was joined by Alito and Gorsuch, but NOT by Kavanaugh.  He argued that a subsequent DHS memorandum, which the court viewed as post-hoc justification, would have passed muster in rescinding the program.

So, it would seem that Kavanaugh and Barrett are the swing votes on DACA (the latter being more of an unknown than swing vote, but still).  I definitely don't think it's a given they would strike down the program itself - or even uphold this judge's order to cease accepting new applications.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, DMC said:

Second, while I'm no lawyer, if the Trump administration's directive rescinding the program was arbitrary and capricious, basic logic suggests so would a federal judge's order. .

I'm not sure about this. I still haven't seen a full breakdown of the ruling, but Judge Hanen did take some steps that could be read as not being arbitrary and capricious. And he did not take Thomas' approach to DACA. His ruling doesn't dismantle DACA, and thus I can see the SC upholding it, but it does appear to create another problem: what happens to current DACA recipients when they need to renew their status? If they're unable to reapply for their protected status, that could be a backdoor way of killing it if the SC sides with him.  

[Kalbear]

It'll cause Biden trouble to kill it, so chances are good they'll kill it. 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm not sure about this. I still haven't seen a full breakdown of the ruling, but Judge Hanen did take some steps that could be read as not being arbitrary and capricious.

Well, his decision is still based on the argument that DACA is unlawful, so I don't see how the SC is getting around that.

Anyway, certainly true that in the Regents case none of the justices, even the majority, were saying that the executive couldn't have rescinding it's own program, just that basically the way they did so violated law.  And that could very well mean that Kavanaugh and even Roberts may strike down DACA given a different case.  However, the fact Kavanaugh did not join Thomas' dissent specifically asserting DAVA as unlawful, nor even just offering that stance in his own opinion, is much more of an indication both he and Roberts are more reticent to strike down DACA than the other way around.

[DMC]

14 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

what happens to current DACA recipients when they need to renew their status? If they're unable to reapply for their protected status, that could be a backdoor way of killing it if the SC sides with him.  

The order doesn't affect renewals, just new applicants - "DHS may continue to accept new DACA applicants and renewal DACA applications as it has been ordered to by the Batalla Vidal court cited above, but is hereby enjoined from approving any new DACA applicants and granting the attendant status" (81).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

42 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, his decision is still based on the argument that DACA is unlawful, so I don't see how the SC is getting around that.

It will indeed be interesting to see what happens.

Quote

Anyway, certainly true that in the Regents case none of the justices, even the majority, were saying that the executive couldn't have rescinding it's own program, just that basically the way they did so violated law.  And that could very well mean that Kavanaugh and even Roberts may strike down DACA given a different case.  However, the fact Kavanaugh did not join Thomas' dissent specifically asserting DAVA as unlawful, nor even just offering that stance in his own opinion, is much more of an indication both he and Roberts are more reticent to strike down DACA than the other way around.

I think this is a fair interpretation except I need to question your last sentence. What do you see as the grey area between striking it down and further watering it down? 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I think this is a fair interpretation except I need to question your last sentence. What do you see as the grey area between striking it down and further watering it down?

I don't really understand the question.  None of the cases or the arguments therein involve "watering it down," like, say, striking down the individual mandate but upholding the rest of the ACA.  The argument is saying the entire program is unlawful, not aspects of it.