Dahlia Litchwick:

On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States, the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act. These justices fear that it is Trump’s prosecution for election subversion that will “destabilize” democracy, requiring them to read a brand-new principle of presidential immunity into a Constitution that guarantees nothing of the sort. They evinced virtually no concern for our ability to continue holding free and fair elections that culminate in a peaceful transfer of power. They instead offered endless solicitude for the former president who fought that transfer of power.

Posting will be a challenge today because I spilled coffee on the mouse and now it’s not working, and trying to format anything without it is making me crazy. And there’s no place handy to get another one. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Amazon can deliver a replacement tomorrow.

It’s a bit ironic that, the day before the Supreme Court immunity hearing, Arizona issued iindictments of the Arizona fake electors and some of their national-level handlers — Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Mike Roman, Jenna Ellis, and Christina Bobb. Philip Bump at WaPo points out that Bobb was recently put in charge of the Trump campaign’s “election integrity division,” or maybe it’s the RNC’s election integrity division; it’s hard to tell.

It was either an odd or a fitting appointment, depending on how you look at it. Bobb wrote a book — “Stealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024” — elevating various debunked allegations about the election, particularly centered on Arizona, where she went to college. Putting Bobb in charge of “election integrity” was a bit like putting the guy who runs the Loch Ness souvenir shop in charge of finding the monster.

At this point, it’s obvious that there was a very real effort coordinated by Trump’s people to throw to use the slates of fake electors to stop Joe Biden from being declared 46th President of the United States on January 6. And then, either by the legislatures of the “contested” states or in the U.S. House of Representatives, Donald Trump would be declared the winner of the election instead. The amount of public evidence for this is overwhelming. This is much worse than Nixon’s Watergate conspiracy.

Even so, as near as I can tell from following live commentary, the conservative justices on the SCOTUS are diddling around and will probably cause the J6 trial to be delayed until after the election. The verdict at WaPo:

Today’s our day off. The Manhattan trial resumes tomorrow. Tomorrow is also when the SCOTUS will hear Trump’s immunity argument. Yesterday the Senate signed off on the aid packages for Ukraine, Israel, et al., and today President Biden signed them. There are other things going on today, but for now I want to look at Congress.

It appears this is Let’s Take Marjorie Taylor Greene Down a Few Pegs Week for congressional Republicans. This is from The Hill:

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) took a shot at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday, saying she is “dragging our brand down.”

“She is a horrible leader,” Tillis said of Greene, according to audio played on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.” “She is dragging our brand down. She — not the Democrats — are the biggest risk to us getting back to a majority.”

Michelle Cottle writes at the New York Times,

It’s not simply that Ms. Greene has taken such a Putin-pleasing approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine (Ukrainian Nazis? Really?) that the term “useful idiot” feels unavoidable. She has, in very little time, undermined the influence of her party’s entire right flank, driving less unhinged Republicans — most notably the House speaker, Mike Johnson — to brush back her and her ilk like the poo-flinging chaos monkeys they are.

Just look at what has come to pass in the House in the past several days: Mr. Johnson, a proud ultraconservative, pushed through a $95 billion foreign aid package, including $60 billion for Ukraine, with more Democratic votes than Republican ones. He is now counting on Democrats to save him from the Greene-led extremists’ plan to defenestrate him and install yet another Republican as speaker. There is much buzz about the emergence of a bipartisan governing coalition in the House, albeit one born of desperation. Squint hard, and Congress almost looks to be functioning as intended, with a majority of members coming together to advance vital legislation. With her special brand of MAGA extremism, Ms. Greene has shifted the House in a bipartisan direction (at least for now) in exactly the way her base loathes. 

See also How Republicans Castrated Themselves at Axios and Trump’s Followers Were Asleep at the Switch at CNN.

It must be that Republican conventional wisdom is saying that going through another change in Speaker now will hurt them in November. Even Donald Trump is telling MTG to lay off Mike Johnson. Trump may love Vlad Putin, but he loves keeping his ass out of prison even more. In any event I’ve seen several opinion pieces this week saying that the Mike Johnson recall is going nowhere at the moment.

Jonathan Martin at Politico writes that Mike Johnson “is taming Trump and his party.” That’s going a bit too far, I think. My sense of things is that the smarter Republicans are realizing that Trump and his base may have peaked, and that it’s okay to begin to back away from MAGA. It’s subtle, but IMO the signs are there.

Republicans were so disciplined to march in lockstep reciting the same talking points for so long. But that’s when they were all taking marching orders from people like Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. Ruthless and smart. Now they’re all taking cues from Trump or people in his orbit. Still ruthless, but not so smart. Indeed, making the Republican Party all about Trump instead of all about some agenda is the heart of the problem, because as a political cause Trump is a void; he’s empty air. If he disappeared tomorrow, there’d be nothing cohesive to hold his “movement” together. And where would that leave the Republican Party?

Where are they now, even? Trump is trying to get his “base” to rally around him, to hold demonstrations, to get in their pickup trucks and go back to running Democrats off the roads. But they aren’t doing it. Will there be Trump trains this year as there were in 2020? I suppose it’s a bit early for that. I’m betting no, but I could be wrong.

As far as the House Republicans are concerned, the “Freedom” Caucus seems to have assumed that being in the minority doesn’t matter as long as they could intimidate everyone else. Whatever they wanted, all they had to do is throw fits and evoke the dread name “Trump,” and everyone else would fall in line. But it’s not working for them, and I’m not sure they’ve figured out why yet.

Is this an admission? I’m reading that today David Pecker of National Enquirer fame was asked why he paid $30,000 for the “illegitimate child” story, even though he believed it not to be true. And Pecker said, “If it got out to another publication, another media outlet, it would have been very embarrassing to the campaign.”

It seems to me that Bragg has a pretty good case. He’s even got the voice recording of Trump and Michael Cohen discussing how they were going to “finance” the project with “our friend David.” I don’t think Trump is going to get away with claiming he had no idea Michael Cohen was killing scandal stories for him. And I understand they have documentary evidence showing how the money was handled. But we’ll see. The whole thing might turn on whether the jury thinks what was done was really illegal.

A couple of pundits have commented that the trial has made Trump seem, well, small. Jennifer Rubin writes, “Rather than dominate the proceedings or leverage his court appearance to appear in control and demonstrate no court could corral him, Trump day by day has become smaller, more decrepit and, frankly, somewhat pathetic.” At Vanity Fair, Molly Jong Fast writes,

Week one of Donald Trump’s hush money trial could have been mundane. It entailed what the legal world refers to as voir dire, during which the judge makes evidentiary judgments to determine which jurors can rule impartially on the case. Yet the first four days of the New York criminal proceedings, which continued with opening statements Monday, painted a rather surprising portrait of a man who could no longer outrun the wheels of justice. They pierced through Trump’s armor in ways both profound and absurd, shattering the public’s perception of a man who may have seemed legally invincible. I knew that this case, compared to those of the past, would prove harder for Teflon Don to repel. But even still, I didn’t think the coating would wear off quite this quickly. …

… Bill Maher predicted last year that this trial would only rally pro-Trump voters and help him secure the presidency. “I think this is a colossal mistake if they bring these charges,” the pundit argued. “I mean, yes, [Trump’s] done a lot of bad things, and I’m sure he did this—everything they accused him of [doing], he did. But first of all, it’s not gonna work. It’s gonna be rocket fuel for his 2024 campaign.”

Yet last week felt like the opposite of “rocket fuel.” If anything, what we saw was a grumpy 77-year-old man who was exhausted from hours of sitting on a hard chair in a cold room, falling asleep to potential jurors talking about their (oft-negative) feelings about him. Before the trial started, Trump’s campaign sent out a fundraising email promising that it was “72 hours until all hell breaks loose.” But there was no hell to speak of. Trump supporters didn’t storm the courthouse like they did the Capitol back in January 2021. In fact, the only turnout Trump got was a smattering of his usual toadies, including Andrew Giuliani. We don’t know what the next four days of Trump’s trial will hold. But if he and his supporters are already feeling depleted, imagine how they’ll feel in June.

Yesterday he begged for more people to show up, and to take to the streets wherever they are:

Donald J. Trump was evidently not happy with what he saw out the window of his chauffeured S.U.V. as he rode through Lower Manhattan on Monday morning for the beginning of opening arguments in his first criminal trial.

The scene that confronted him as he approached the dingy courthouse at 100 Centre Street was underwhelming. Across the street, at Collect Pond Park, the designated site for protesters during the trial, only a handful of Trump supporters had gathered, and the number would not grow much throughout the morning.

Mr. Trump has portrayed his legal jeopardy as a threat to America itself, and he has suggested that the country would not put up with it. But the streets around the courthouse on Monday were chaos-free — well-patrolled and relatively quiet. As his motorcade made its way to the courthouse, the few Trump supporters gathered in the park were outnumbered by Trump detractors, who waved signs about his alleged liaison with a porn star.

Mr. Trump had tried to gin up something noisier. Shortly after 7 a.m., he posted on his social media website that “America Loving Protesters should be allowed to protest at the front steps of Courthouses” and he followed this lament with a call for his supporters to “GO OUT AND PEACEFULLY PROTEST. RALLY BEHIND MAGA. SAVE OUR COUNTRY!” …

… Later in the morning, Mr. Trump sought to cast the poor turnout as more evidence of a plot against him. In a post at 8:50 a.m., he implied that would-be MAGA protesters were being discriminated against for political reasons.

I’m hearing there were maybe a dozen MAGAs hanging outside the courtroom todday. But Trump imagined something else.

Donald Trump claimed that a massive police presence has shut down traffic for blocks around the Manhattan courthouse where his hush-money trial is being held, preventing his supporters from showing their support and protesting on his behalf. But reality looks a little different.

NBC News reporter Vaughn Hillyard posted a video outside the courthouse Tuesday morning. The clip shows a pretty quiet street fully open to traffic, with only one Trump supporter there, according to Hillyard.

WTF?

This is very embarassing to the campaign, I’m sure.

I’m following the gag order hearing on the New York Times live feed. Trump’s lawyer basically is saying that everything Trump says has a political context and therefore has to be considered “free speech.”

New York Times, just now (10:22 am edt):

This is not going well for Blanch. The judge is interrupting and scolding him, the New York Times said.

From TPM:

As Blanche flails, Merchan spells it out: “You’re losing all credibility with the court.”

I believe the hearing is concluded. Judge Merchan is not going to give a ruling right away.

There is a widespread perception that the hearing went very, very badly for Trump.

The jury wasn’t present for the gag order hearing, for which Trump and his lawyers should be grateful. The trial will reconvene at 11 eastern time.

Right now there’s an overwhelming amount of commentary on the opening arguments (example) that I’m still sorting out. Here’s also a key takeaways article from WaPo. Jeremy Stahl writes at Slate that Trump seemed to be mentally checking out whenever the prosecution was presenting its arguments. The defense arguments seem wobbly to me, but all they have to do is plant reasonable doubt in just one juror’s mind.

Judge Engoron accepted the hinky appeal bond (drat) but put some conditions on it. The state of New York is never going to see that money, I fear.

I’m hearing that there were no pro-Trump protesters outside the court. Many are also noting that no member of Trump’s family — not his wife, none of his children — are in the Court with him. He’s really all alone.

Tomorrow morning is the gag order hearing. I am not going to guess what might happen.

With so much going on this week I plan to do a lot of short posts instead of a few omnibus posts. I already posted about the Sandoval ruling this morning. That’s interesting stuff by itself. In the Manhattan criminal trial, the prosecution has made opening arguments and the defense is finishing up. It’s going to be a short trial day today because one of the jurors has a medical issue that needs addressing. The best way to follow along is the New York Times live feed, IMO. No paywall.

Update: The trial had time to introduce the first witness, who is David Pecker of the National Enquirer. He’ll be brought back to the stand tomorrow.

The hearing on Trump’s appeal bond is today, but I’m not sure when. I’m not seeing any new news about it pop up yet.

I wanted to say something more about Congress and the bills passed on Saturday. Axios is reporting that many House Republicans are mightily pissed at Marjorie Taylor Greene.

A growing number of House Republicans are accusing their conservative colleagues of enabling Democratic wins, especially after this weekend’s foreign aid votes.

Why it matters: Multiple members believe they could have gotten concessions from Democrats on border policy in exchange for Ukraine funding, only to be blown up by backlash from conservatives.

My understanding is that Chuck Schumer wants the Senate to accept what the House passed as is and march it to the Oval Office to be signed. I don’t think that’s happened yet. But it’s fascinating that Greene is getting blowback for trying to stop the Ukraine bill entirely. I’ve been seeing news stories here and there over the past few days about how Senate Republicans think Moscow Marjorie needs to dial it back. She’s even getting blowback on Fox News. And now some House members are openly criticizing her also. She may be about to learn the limits of her own influence.

Update: See also All Talk Marge by Josh Marshall.

See also Vance versus McConnell defines GOP Ukraine fight at The Hill.

Good morning everybody! This is the first day of what could be a significant week. And we have a ruling on Friday’s Sandoval hearing already.

Merchan granted questioning about the following:

*The New York Attorney General verdict that Trump misstated the value of his assets for economic benefit
*That he violated a court order in attacking Judge Engoron’s clerk during that case
*That he was found to have defamed E. Jean Carroll
*That he was found another time to have defamed E. Jean Carroll
*That he stipulated to the dissolution of the Trump foundation in another NYAG case

This is from the New York Times:

Here is the prosecutor’s original request. One of the items left out is the finding that Trump did in fact “secually abuse” (i,e., rape) E. Jean Carroll.

I’m reading in Newsweek that “Prosecutors cannot ask the former president about the Trump Organization’s tax fraud conviction in 2022 nor the frivolous lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in Florida.”

It remains to be seen if Trump will insist on testifying anyway. Only a moron would testify under these circumstances, but, well, Trump IS a moron, so … Maggie Haberman wrote in the NY Times live feed,

It was always clear that Trump was going to be told to wait to see the outcome of the Sandoval hearing before deciding whether to testify. Recall that he wanted to testify in his trial in the first E. Jean Carroll case, and several advisers and lawyers told him not to. He decided that had he only done so, he would have avoided the liability in that case.

And I’m sure he’s wrong. By all accounts it was his own bad behavior in court that helped put the jury on E. Jean Carroll’s side, and apparently he remains oblivious to that.

The judge is now instructing the jury. I’ll post more stuff today if and when anything significant happens.

Update: Joyce Vance’s assessment.

There’s an article in Salon by Jonathan Larsen that sheds more light on Mike Johnson’s shift toward Ukraine funding. And it indeed has to do with reports that Russians are  targeting evangelicals in Ukraine. Larsen writes that Ukrainians have been in contact with “the Family,” the Christian cult that runs the National Prayer Breakfast.  The  American evangelicals have been mostly focused on their version of “religious liberty,” by which they mean they get to have power in government to shape policy to fit their agenda. They’re big on anti-LGBTQ legislation, for example. I get the impression that they’ve generally approved of Vladimir Putin because of his anti-LGBTQ policies in Russia. But reports of brutality against Ukrainian evangelicals may have changed things. Larsen writes,

While most mainstream news hasn’t picked up on it, religious media outlets have started to notice how Russian President Vladimir Putin is waging a war on that most sacred of right-wing cows: Religious freedom.

That message is coming — with elements of truth but also an agenda — from a small but well-connected cadre of Ukrainian and American evangelicals, including prayer-breakfast leaders.

And right-wing Ukrainian evangelicals with strong ties to American counterparts just won an important ask from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, right as House Republicans are considering whether to help him.

The “agenda” is that the Ukraine evangelicals also favor anti-LGBTQ politics and are promising to promote those policies in Ukraine if Ukraine prevails. They’re like 4 percent of the population of Ukraine, but they have big plans.

Still, if this causes a real shift in evangelical views about Putin, it could be huge. It might even cause some of them to think twice about Trump. And Marjorie Taylor Greene, too, if she doesn’t get the memo.

David Frum writes,

On aid to Ukraine, Trump got his way for 16 months. When Democrats held the majority in the House of Representatives in 2022, they approved four separate aid requests for Ukraine, totaling $74 billion. As soon as Trump’s party took control of the House, in January 2023, the aid stopped. Every Republican officeholder understood: Those who wished to show loyalty to Trump must side against Ukraine.

At the beginning of this year, Trump was able even to blow up the toughest immigration bill seen in decades—simply to deny President Joe Biden a bipartisan win. Individual Senate Republicans might grumble, but with Trump opposed, the border-security deal disintegrated.

Three months later, Trump’s party in Congress has rebelled against him—and not on a personal payoff to some oddball Trump loyalist, but on one of Trump’s most cherished issues, his siding with Russia against Ukraine.

The anti-Trump, pro-Ukraine rebellion started in the Senate. Twenty-two Republicans joined Democrats to approve aid to Ukraine in February. Dissident House Republicans then threatened to force a vote if the Republican speaker would not schedule one. Speaker Mike Johnson declared himself in favor of Ukraine aid. This weekend, House Republicans split between pro-Ukraine and anti-Ukraine factions. On Friday, the House voted 316–94 in favor of the rule on the aid vote. On Saturday, the aid to Ukraine measure passed the House by 311–112. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will adopt the House-approved aid measures unamended and speed them to President Biden for signature.

As defeat loomed for his anti-Ukraine allies, Trump shifted his message a little. On April 18, he posted on Truth Social claiming that he, too, favored helping Ukraine. “As everyone agrees, Ukrainian Survival and Strength should be much more important to Europe than to us, but it is also important to us!” But that was after-the-fact face-saving, jumping to the winning side after his side was about to lose.

Still, 112 House Republicans voted against aid to Ukraine. So this doesn’t amount to a significant rebellion against Trump. But maybe it’s a little one. Frum also points to Trump’s badly lagging fundraising numbers and the minority of primary voters who continue to vote for Nikki Haley. There are cracks in the facade. Maybe more traditional Republicans are realizing they don’t have to be afraid of Trump. We can hope.

In other news: There’s an NBC poll showing that a third-party RFK Jr. candidacy hurts Trump more than Biden. As near as I can tell, RFK Jr. has adopted most of Trump’s positions on just about everything, so that would make sense.

The New York Post reports that Michael Avenatti — yeah, that guy — says he’s talking to Trump’s legal team — and would testify for the ex-prez. Michael Avenatti is currently locked up in a federal prison near Los Angeles, so testifying for anybody would be a nice break, I guess. Ari Melber on MSNBC interviewed Avenatti via Zoom a few days ago, and it was a waste of time. Avenatti just wanted to talk about himself. And he had nothing insider-y or original to say about the Manhattan trial.

At the Atlantic, see Boeing and the Dark Age of American Manufacturing. It puts the Boeing debacle into a larger context. Nice bit of writing.

One more thing: This just popped up at Salon — A prehistory of MAGA: “Mainstream” conservatives never really purged the fascists. Paul Rosenberg interviews David Austin Walsh, who is the author of a new book titled Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement and the Far Right, As I understand it, very briefly, the book chronicles that American conservativism tried to put up a wall between “principled,” “normie” conservatism and the fascist/racist Right (see Rachel Maddow, Prequel) , but it didn’t really.  In the struggle between the normies and the Nazis, the normies needed the Nazis to win elections and otherwise get anything accomplished. It seems to me the normies got way too comfortable with dog-whistling and otherwise pandering to the Nazis to keep them in the tent. And that  takes us from Reaganism to Newt Gingrich to Karl Rove and George W. Bush to Donald Trump. At some point the Nazis got the upper hand and decided they didn’t need the normies.

As expected, the House passed $61 billion in aid for Ukraine this afternoon, as well as $26 billion in aid for Israel and Gaza. Earlier they passed $8.1 billion in aid for Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region and a bill that requires the current Chinese owner of TikTok to sell or face a potential ban.

Moscow Marjorie is pissed. I understand she threw a fit when many of the Dems started waving little Ukrainian flags when the bill passed.

Now these have to go back to the Senate. I don’t know how much the  House bills differ from what the Senate passed earlier. I hope the Ukraine bill can get done quickly.

The Mowcow caucus did its best to stop the Ukraine bill. MTG proposed an amendment that would have reduced the funding to zero. Some one else tried to get the bill sent back to committee. The final vote was 311 to 112. I believe all the Democrats voted yes. The vote among Republicans was 101 yes, 112 no, and one “present.”

The next question is, why did Mike Johnson decide to support aid to Ukraine? There is reporting from Politico that suggests he was swayed by new intelligence that Ukraine is on the ropes now. He seems to get that Putin wouldn’t stop and Ukraine and could eventually invade a NATO country eventually. And there’s World War III.

Will Mike Johnson be removed as Speaker? The Moscow Causcus will try. But there’s some interesting reporting from Sarah Posner at MSNBC. See Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attempts to out-Jesus Mike Johnson aren’t going to work.

Greene and her fellow ideologues may want to tread carefully. There is a growing backlash on the Christian right against the move to oust Johnson. While Greene’s MAGA influencer antics garner significant media attention, people with longtime clout in the evangelical political trenches, including Johnson himself, have been waging a quiet but scathing war against her in Christian media. The GOP’s evangelical base — vital to Republican hopes in the fall — is hearing that Greene is groundlessly attacking a godly man and imperiling the party’s election chances, thus bringing (in Johnson’s words) the Democrats’ “crazy woke agenda” closer to fruition.

Johnson himself struck first, appearing on the Christian Broadcasting Network with David Brody, a popular evangelical reporter known for nabbing newsy interviews with Washington insiders. The speaker pushed back at Greene’s attacks on his faith, including a tirade on X, railing against Johnson’s supposedly un-Christian capitulation to big government spending: “@SpeakerJohnson you can’t follow Christ and fund full term abortion clinics,” Greene wrote. Never mind that there is no federal funding for abortion, nor is there such a thing as a “full-term abortion.” Greene’s aim was to one-up Johnson as the most ardent Christian patriot in the room.

The problem for MTG, says Posner, is that Mike Johnson has been a big deal in right-wing evangelicalism for a very long time. MTG is someone on the periphery of that world, not really a long-time participant in it, and certainly not a leader of it. There is widespread concern that if there is another messy change of Speaker, it could cost Republicans seats in the House in November. Also it may be that most evengelicals aren’t as fond of Vladimir Putin as MTG is.

There’s also reporting from Time magazine that Russians have been targeting evangelicals in Ukraine with torture and imprisonment. Putin has been oppressive to all religious groups that aren’t that aren’t the Russian Orthodox Church. But he seems to especially hate evangelicals because that’s an “American” relligion.

After they beat Azat Azatyan so bad blood came out of his ears; after they sent electric shocks up his genitals; after they wacked him with pipes and truncheons, the Russians began to interrogate him about his faith. “When did you become a Baptist? When did you become an American spy?” Azat tried to explain that in Ukraine there was freedom of religion, you could just choose your faith. But his torturers saw the world the same way as their predecessors at the KGB did: an American church is just a front for the American state. …

… Evangelicals are targeted by the Russians disproportionally, and Azat’s story is typical for Russia’s systemic persecution of Protestants in occupied Ukraine. Protestants were the victims of 34 percent of the reported persecution events, and 48 percent in the Zaporizhzhia region where Azat was held. Baptists made up 13 percent of victims – the largest single group after Ukrainian Orthodox. Under Russian control 400 Baptist congregations have been lost, 17% of the total in Ukraine.   

This is the first I’ve heard of this. I wonder if Mike Johnson heard some of this, also. Awhile back there was some reporting in Christian publications that it was Volodymyr Zelensky oppressing Christians in Ukraine. This Christianity Today article from 2003 making this claim mentioned Tucker Carlson several times, which makes me suspect he was the source. It’s also the case that before he died Pat Robertson declared that Putin was compelled by God to invade Ukraine because it was part of a larger plan to invade Israel and bring about the end times. I believe I mentioned this at the time, noting that perhaps God needs better maps.

As of this afternoon, the plan as I understand it is that the House crazy fringe is not going to call for Johnson’s removal right away, but instead will build up support for removal in the House which is somehow going to force him to resign. But as I’ve also said before I would not be utterly shocked if some Democrats would vote to keep him in place, if such a vote came to the floor. Because the Republicans could always do a lot worse.

In other news: There’s been a lot of yakking about whether the Manhattan Trump trial is going to help him or hurt him politically. A lot may depend on whether he is convicted, of course. Dahlia Lithwick addressed this last week. I liked this part:

And so, those who are dismissing the electoral consequences of this criminal trial by declaring that events in Manhattan over the next few weeks will merely animate Trump’s base—a base that will see this trial as yet more proof of the Deep State’s (™) persecution of their Lord—are also demonstrating a fundamental misunderstanding of electoral math. You cannot mobilize the voters who are already absolutely voting for Trump to any greater heights. No matter how rabid their fury, and how bottomless their sense of shared grievance, they still get only one vote each—at least until they figure out how to commit the voter fraud they love to decry on a broader scale. The rank and file in the tank for MAGA cannot become more impactful.

A lot about this trial could have an impact on people who aren’t tuned into politics and may just be starting to pay attention to the election. And I don’t see anythnng about this trial that makes Trump look good.

And let us not forget that Monday is the day Trump’s $175 million bond may be bounced. Or at least there will be a hearing. Yesterday Letitia James asked the court to bounce it.

In a filing on Friday, James said Knight Specialty Insurance Company, which underwrote Trump’s bond, has not been able to show that it has enough collateral to back it. She described KSIC as “a small insurer that is not authorized to write business in New York and thus not regulated by the state’s insurance department,” and said the company had never written a surety bond in New York or in the past two years in any other jurisdiction.

Next week could be eventful.