Trump’s deadline to put up the E. Jean Carroll judgment is this Saturday, March 9, and he’s still trying to get out of it. This just happened today:

 Former President Donald Trump is seeking a new trial in the defamation case brought by former Elle magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, arguing that the judge in the case improperly restricted his testimony.

Trump in January was ordered to pay $83.3 million in damages to Carroll for defaming her in 2019 when he denied her allegation that he sexually abused her in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store in the 1990s.

Trump spent less than five minutes on the witness stand, during which he testified that “I just wanted to defend myself, my family and frankly the presidency.”

Judge Lewis Kaplan instructed the jury to disregard the remark because it fell outside the bounds of what Trump was allowed to say.

In a court filing Tuesday, defense attorneys argued “the Court’s restrictions on President Trump’s testimony were erroneous and prejudicial” because Trump was not allowed to explain “his own mental state” when he made the defamatory statements about Carroll.

“This Court’s erroneous decision to dramatically limit the scope of President Trump’s testimony almost certainly influenced the jury’s verdict, and thus a new trial is warranted,” defense attorneys Alina Habba and John Sauer said.

The defense also asked Judge Kaplan to reduce the $83.3 million damage award, arguing it “surpasses the permissible bounds for such damages and exceeds comparable awards” in the Southern District of New York.

I can’t imagine how “his own mental state” would be a legal excuse to say any of the things he said. Also, in the second trial that ended in January, the judge had already found Trump guilty of defaming Carroll, and the only thing the trial was about was how much damages Trump would have to pay. Trump doesn’t seem to grasp that.  It’s also likely Kaplan was doing Trump a favor by limiting his speech in court, considering how badly Trump’s own behavior hurt him in that case.

I am going to be absolutely furious if some other judge somewhere lets Trump  slide on this.

Earlier today Carroll’s lawyers had hit back at Trump for his “promise” to be good for the penalty without putting up a bond. This is from Law & Crime:

In response to Donald Trump‘s continued promises to a judge in New York that he will pay the $83.3 million he owes to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her — without posting security — Carroll’s lawyer has offered a taut reply: Once again, Trump offers nothing to credit him but his “unsubstantiated say so.”

The message came in a one-page letter to U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan after the former president — already beset on all sides by indictments and legal dramas in Florida, Georgia, Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in New York City — asked for a third time to stay the execution of the defamation award to the veteran writer.

Trump’s attorneys Alina Habba and John Sauer have proposed that the court should give the defendant an unsecured 30-day delay to pay until all of his post-trial motions are resolved, or to allow him to post a reduced bond that would come in at little over $24.4 million.

Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan wrote in the Monday letter to the judge that Trump’s latest filings are riddled with incorrect claims that it is she who “mischaracterized” existing Second Circuit case law on the enforcement of judgment without the posting of bond or another condition.

Not only has Trump once again offered “no alternative means other than his own unsubstantiated say so that he will have the $83.3 million available when Carroll prevails on appeal,” Kaplan wrote, but when his lawyers pointed to a 2015 strip search case in Long Island to support their argument, they misinterpreted it.

There’s more. But, yes, everybody knows what a hole Trump is in and that he has a history of lying about money.  No one with any sense would trust him. His promioses to pay for anything mean nothing.

At The New Republic, Greg Sargent has a bad news is kind of good news post —

As expected, the Supreme Court is keeping Trump on the Colorado ballot. It was a unanimous decision [maybe not; see below] that I have just given a quick skim. The gist of it seems to be that only the U.S. Congress can determine if a presidential candidate is disqualified under the 14th Amendment insurrection clause. States may disqualify candidates for state offices any way they like, but not a national office.

NBC News —

The court said the Colorado Supreme Court had wrongly assumed that states can determine whether a presidential candidate or other candidate for federal office is ineligible.

The ruling makes it clear that Congress, not states, has to set rules on how the 14th Amendment provision can be enforced against federal office-seekers. As such the decision applies to all states, not just Colorado. States retain the power to bar people running for state office from appearing on the ballot under section 3.

“Because the Constitution makes Congress, rather than the states, responsible for enforcing section 3 against all federal officeholders and candidates, we reverse,” the ruling said.

By deciding the case on that legal question, the court avoided any analysis or determination of whether Trump’s actions constituted an insurrection.

I’m sure there will be all kinds of learned legal analyses of this decision as the day goes on. I’ll keep an eye out for anything interesting.

Update: Here’s something interesting. At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern writes The Supreme Court’s “Unanimous” Trump Ballot Ruling Is Actually a 5–4 Disaster.

Five justices—Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—went further: They declared that only Congress may enforce the insurrection clause against federal candidates. How, exactly? The majority says that Congress must “prescribe” specific procedures to “ascertain” when an individual is disqualified under the 14^th Amendment. Such procedures, of course, do not exist today. And without them, the majority insists—in just a few paragraphs of sparse reasoning—the insurrection clause cannot be enforced against office seekers. It derives this conclusion from two primary sources: “Griffin’s Case,” an 1869 opinion written by Chief Justice Salmon Chase, acting as a circuit judge, and Section 5 of the 14^th Amendment, which says, “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

The three liberal justices wrote a separate opinion, authored jointly, to explain why this reasoning fails. First, Griffin’s Case was, until Monday, widely discredited as the political handiwork of a chief justice plotting to run for the presidency as a great conciliator between North and South. It is “a nonprecedential, lower court opinion by a single Justice in his capacity as a circuit judge,” as the liberal justices wrote. Moreover, Sen. Lyman Trumbull, an author of the 14^th Amendment, resisted the logic of Griffin’s Case, declaring that while congressional legislation might provide a “more efficient and speedy remedy” for disqualifying a candidate, it is the 14^th Amendment itself that “prevents a person from holding office.”

Second, it is bizarre to claim that the insurrection clause requires enabling legislation by Congress when the remainder of the 14^th Amendment—indeed, all three amendments ratified after the Civil War—is “self-executing” (meaning it does not require congressional action for enforcement). Everyone agrees that Congress need not pass a law to ensure that all persons have due process, equal protection, and freedom from enslavement. Why, the liberals wondered, did the majority create “a special rule” for the insurrection clause alone? They added that the clause does mention congressional action, but only to say that Congress may lift a disqualification by two-thirds vote: “It is hard to understand why the Constitution would require a congressional supermajority to remove a disqualification if a simple majority could nullify Section 3’s operation by repealing or declining to pass implementing legislation.”

These disagreements matter a great deal. As the liberals point out, the majority’s sweeping Congress-only approach “forecloses judicial enforcement” of the insurrection clause—in, for instance, the context of a criminal trial involving an insurrectionist. It also bars future enforcement on the basis of “general federal statutes” that compel “the government to comply with the law,” since the majority says any congressional enforcement must be “tailored” to the insurrection clause. And it even empowers the Supreme Court to prevent Congress from disqualifying an insurrectionist in the future, because the court can claim that any enabling legislation did not adhere to the made-up rules in Monday’s opinion. By blocking off these pathways, the liberals wrote, the majority “foreclose future efforts to disqualify a presidential candidate under that provision. In a sensitive case crying out for judicial restraint, it abandons that course.” They continued:

Section 3 serves an important, though rarely needed, role in our democracy. The American people have the power to vote for and elect candidates for national office, and that is a great and glorious thing. The men who drafted and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment, however, had witnessed an “insurrection [and] rebellion” to defend slavery. They wanted to ensure that those who had participated in that insurrection, and in possible future insurrections, could not return to prominent roles. Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President.

Notably, the liberals actually had Justice Amy Coney Barrett on their side too. She authored a separate opinion expressing her disapproval of the majority’s overreach but declining to say more because “the court should turn the national temperature down, not up.” So, in effect, Anderson is a 5–4 decision, with a bare majority effectively repealing the insurrection clause for federal officeholders. The liberals’ disapproving citations to Bush v. Gore and Dobbs give a sense of how disastrously they believe the majority went astray.

In related news, Allen H. Weisselberg is expected to plead guilty to felony perjury today.

Recommended read by Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Inquirer: Mitch McConnell is the arsonist who set America on fire and ran away.

At Rolling Stone, Trump’s White House Was ‘Awash in Speed’ — and Xanax.

In January, the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report detailing how the White House Medical Unit during the Trump administration distributed controlled substances with scant oversight and even sloppier record keeping. Investigators repeatedly noted that the unit had ordered thousands and thousands of doses of the stimulant modafinil, which has been used by military pilots for decades to stay alert during long missions. 

The report didn’t say why so many of those pills had been given out. But for many who served in the Trump White House, the investigation highlighted an open secret. According to interviews with four former senior administration officials and others with knowledge of the matter, the stimulant was routinely given to staffers who needed an energy boost after a late night, or just a pick-me-up to handle another day at a uniquely stressful job. As one of the former officials tells Rolling Stone, the White House at that time was “awash in speed.”

Here’s what the Mayo Clinic says about modafinil. I’ve long suspected Trump was taking some kind of stimulant, and this could be it. It can cause mental confusion.

The U.S. airdropped thousands of meals into Gaza earlier today and plans to airdrop a lot more. I hope this helps. There are also reports that Israel has agreed to the framework of a six-week cease-fire.

Stuff to Read: At Axios, see “Department of Life”: Trump allies plot abortion crackdown for second term. The Heritage Foundations is calling for the Department of Health and Human Services to be the Department of Life. And the first act of the DoL would be “explicitly rejecting the notion that abortion is health care and by restoring its mission statement under the Strategic Plan and elsewhere to include furthering the health and well-being of all Americans ‘from conception to natural death.'”

See also Lulu Garcia-Navarro at the New York Times, Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism.’ No paywall.

Also at the New York Times, see As Trump’s Criminal Trial Approaches, He May Be His Own Worst Enemy by, um, a bunch of people. It basically documents that Trump has been ordering his lawyers what to do in court because Trump thinks he knows better than anyone. And this is likely to trip him in the upcoming hush money case, which will be heard by Justice Juan M. Merchan. Justice Merchan was born in Bogotá, and we’ll see how much time expires before Trump posts some anti-Latino slur about him on his toy social media site.

Lawyers who have represented Mr. Trump view the prospect of him testifying before Justice Merchan as potentially disastrous. The judge is a no-nonsense jurist who presided over the conviction of Mr. Trump’s family business in a tax fraud trial.

If Mr. Trump insists, he could pose a make-or-break challenge for Mr. Blanche and Ms. Necheles.

They recently appeared before Justice Merchan at a pretrial hearing with their client mostly silent beside them, and seemed to test the tightrope he will walk during the trial. Mr. Trump wanted to delay it, but the judge promptly set a March date.

Mr. Blanche lodged objections, none of which swayed Justice Merchan, who quickly bridled. “Tell me something you haven’t already said today,” the judge said.

Shortly thereafter, Justice Merchan asked Mr. Blanche if he was done talking. He was not, but the judge cut him off, instructing Mr. Blanche to “please have a seat.”

“Yes, your honor,” Mr. Blanche replied, sitting down with Mr. Trump.

Update: Here’s another one, by Chauncy DeVega at Salon: “Better than Jesus”: How far will the cult of Trump go?

At least the Joe Biden impeachment clown show in the House seems to be well and truly dead, for the moment, anyway. As in, like, they may start to say, “what impeachment?” At WaPo, Dana Milbank asks, How do you say ‘impeachment is dead’ in Russian?

Bad news and good news. I just heard the bad news, which is that the Supreme Court has decided to hear the Trump immunity claim, which is going to delay the J6 trial, possibly fatally. I’m just hearing this, as I said.

The justices set argument for the week of April 22 to consider a unanimous ruling from a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit that rejected Trump’s sweeping assertion of immunity from prosecution.

I haven’t digested the details yet. Now for the good news:

The New York Times reports that Trump admits he doesn’t have the cash to post the civil fraud case penalty.

Donald J. Trump offered a New York appeals court on Wednesday a bond of only $100 million to pause the more than $450 million judgment he faces in his civil fraud case, saying that he might need to sell some of his properties unless he gets relief.

An appellate court judge promptly denied Mr. Trump’s emergency request to halt the financial judgment, but the former president is not out of options. Mr. Trump can try again with a panel of five appellate court judges, which will entertain his request next month.

However that panel rules, the request represented a stunning acknowledgment that the former president, who is racing the clock to secure a bond from a company for the full amount if he does not produce the money himself, lacks the resources to do so. …

… In seeking relief, Mr. Trump’s lawyers disclosed that he would be unable to secure a bond for the full $454 million, raising the prospect that he might soon default on the judgment if the full appeals court denies his request.

He’s trying to get a court to delay the judgment that he can’t do business with a financial institution registered in New York, which is pretty much all of them outside of Russia. He also wants more time to get the money together.

The link should get you past the paywall. This was my last gift article for the month for the New York Times, so take advantage. Anyway, the 30-day clock started ticking on February 23, so he’s going to have a hard time selling and closing on properties in time.

Mr. Trump might eventually be able to secure a bigger bond. His stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, his social media company, could be worth up to $4 billion after a long-delayed merger is made final this year.

No way is that crap Truth Social worth anything. But let’s go on … NY Attorney General  Letitia James has already asked the court to deny the request. And if Trump admits he can’t come up with the money, she can start foreclosing before the 30 days are up, the news story says.

In its own filing, Ms. James’s office asked the appeals court to deny Mr. Trump’s request.

“There is no merit to defendants’ contention that a full bond or deposit is unnecessary because they are willing to post a partial undertaking of less than a quarter of the judgment amount,” the attorney general’s office wrote. “Defendants all but concede that Mr. Trump has insufficient liquid assets to satisfy the judgment.”

I want New York to seize the Westchester golf club and turn it into a public park. It looks like it has a really nice swimming pool.

The Daily Beast says AG James accused Trump of sneaking assets into Florida.

Donald Trump is already trying to dodge the colossal $464 million bank fraud judgment, with the former president attempting on Wednesday to appeal the decision without forking over the cash required to challenge the ruling. 

But as Trump’s lawyers claim he doesn’t have the money to appeal without selling a building, the New York Attorney General claimed Trump is quietly moving his assets to Florida. …

… But when the AG raised objections in court documents to the proposal to put up a reduced amount of collateral, Letitia James drew attention to another matter entirely: Trump appears to be trying to move assets out of her reach.

Dennis Fan, a senior assistant solicitor general at the AG’s office, alerted appellate judges at the state’s First Judicial Department that Trump has sneakily relocated business entities from New York to Florida.

“There is substantial risk that defendants will attempt to evade enforcement of the judgment (or make enforcement more difficult) following appeal,” Fan wrote, noting that “after the court issued its February 16 order, defendants announced for the first time that various Trump Organization entities operating in New York are allegedly now located in Florida.”

“As the court recognized earlier in this case, there is unfortunately a distinct need to ‘ensure that defendants do not dissipate their assets or transfer them out of this jurisdiction,’” he continued.

This is just exhausting.

The Michigan primary showed Nikki Haley losing whatever steam she had. I’ve been thinking she would stay in at least until after Super Tuesday, which is next week, but we’ll see.

On the Dem side, with 95 percent of votes counted, President Biden has 81.1 percent of the vote; uncommitted 13.3 percent; Marianne Williamson 3.0 percent, and Dean Phillips 2.7 percent. Yes, once again we see Dean “no steam” Phillips having a worse night than New Age Snake Oil Saleswoman Marianne Williamson, even after Williamson had suspended her campaign. Unfortunatelly Williamson was so encouraged by her distant third finish she unsuspended her campaign. I’m not sure what she thinks she’s going to accomplish. There will be no Dem primary television debates, which I assume helped her sell a lot of books in 2000.

Josh Marshall has an interesting observation about “uncommitted.”

There’s a significant difference between the breakdown of the primary day and the early/mail vote. The gist is that the primary day vote is significantly better for “uncommitted” and the early/mail vote better for Biden. The net effect of this is that Biden seems to be adding to his margins now since the primary day vote was in most cases getting counted first. So for instance, Dearborn (which is the heart of the state’s Arab-American community) had been like 75% for uncommitted. But now it’s at roughly 55% to 41% as the early votes get counted.

Dearborn is in Wayne County, which currently has 17 percent for uncommitted.

I have a few theories. But they’re just that.

My read of the overall contest is that there was a lot of coverage of an anti-Biden protest vote. That spurred what amounts to a normie-Dem driven counter-protest. That’s what gets you such an overall high turnout. The normies I would guess are more consistent voting Democrats who tend to be higher educated and more affluent. Those folks do a lot of voting by mail and early voting in all elections. The uncommitted meanwhile seems heavily centered in the college towns and perhaps in less consistently voting immigrant communities. It seems plausible that those were more primary day voting groups. Again, this last point is informed speculation.

That’s probably as good an explanation as any, until a better one comes along. I suspect President Biden will need those uncommitted votes to win Michigan in November, so I hope he takes the message they’re sending very seriously. U.S. foreign policy should have gotten tougher on Bibi Netanyahu a long time ago. On many occasions Biden has said with some pride that he has worked with every Israeli Prime Minister since Golda Meir. Some of the young folks who voted “uncommitted” yesterday possibly never heard of Golda Meir and don’t remember when she was a much-loved figure in the U.S. But her days have long passed, and it’s time the U.S. faced that.

In other news: A “star witness” for the Trump lawyers’ side of the contest to disqualify Fani Willis failed to deliver anything approximating “testimony” at a hearing yesterday. How long is this nonsense going to drag on?

Also, too: Mitch McConnell is going to step down from his Senate leadership position in November.

The critical thing about today’s Miichigan primaries is how much of an “uncommited” protest vote Biden will get. And whether Trump continues to underperform his polling numbers. If there are results before it’s ridiculously late I may comment on them. Feel free to comment here also, as usual.

Paul Waldman and Tom Schaller have a new book out called White Rural Rage: The Threat to American Democracy. I’ve just downloaded a Kindle edition and will let you know how it is.

Trump is trying to get out of posting a bond for the E. Jean Carroll appeal. And part of his argument is that he’s too rich to be expected to come up with a bond like some ordinary person. Asking him for a bond is an insult, apparently.

“Having argued to the jury that President Trump has great financial resources, Plaintiff is in no position to contradict herself now and contend that she requires the protection of a bond during the brief period while post-trial motions are pending,” he huffs. “This fact nullifies risk to the judgment creditor and weighs heavily in favor of an unsecured stay.”

He then immediately turns around and argues that, despite his vast wealth, having to post a bond would constitute irreparable injury.

“Here, under this district’s common practice of requiring a bond of 110 percent of the judgment, President Trump faces the prospect of posting a bond of $91.63 million—a sizeable bond which will come with very substantial, non-recoverable financial costs,” he moans. “These costs plainly constitute irreparable injury.”

You can read more about it here. This is truly desperate. Trump’s time is up to appeal this case on March 9. I’m betting he’s figured out he can’t come up with all the money he needs for his appeals without liquidating assets, which everyone will notice and which will reveal maybe he’s not a rich as he claims. See also Trump throws Truth Social tantrum demanding all cases against him “must be immediately halted.”

Update: They’re still counting votes, but it looks like the “uncommited” vote is respectable. This is supposed to be a vote to demand a cease fire in Gaza, and I hope that message is received.

Although the headlines tell us Trump won a huge victory in South Carolina yesterday, I’m seeing commentary saying the results aren’t all good news for him.

Jim Newell, Slate, Trump’s South Carolina Victory Tells Us Some Important Things About His Weaknesses.

 Trump isn’t your run-of-the-mill non-incumbent, is he? He’s a former president with the near-total backing of the new party establishment. He’s about to put his daughter-in-law in charge of the central party organ, because he can. Congressional Republicans quiver at his every utterance.

And still, hundreds of thousands of voters, and a hearty 40 percent of the electorate in Saturday’s primary, voted for his opponent, a supposedly globalist Republican-in-name-only traitor to the cause. He may have all but secured the nomination by running an incumbent’s campaign. But the actual incumbent, won 96 percent of the vote in the South Carolina Democratic primary in early February. I invite you to imagine the punditry had President Biden ceded 40 percent to Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson—or even 10 percent.

Trump underperformed polling with his margin of victory, too. The FiveThirtyEight polling average showed a 28-point Trump lead, and he won by 20. While Trump came fairly close to hitting his projected vote share, Haley’s support was underestimated, suggesting her rigorous campaigning over the last month was effective on the margins. Haley, according to exit polls, won two-thirds of voters who decided this month. Unfortunately for her, only 16 percent of voters decided this month.

Trump’s weaknesses in the exit polls will ring familiar. Haley won independents, those who aren’t evangelical Christians, college graduates, first-time voters, moderates, non-gun owners, and those who oppose a national abortion ban. Among the third of the primary electorate who do not think Trump would be fit for the presidency if convicted of a crime, Haley won 87 percent. This is too much of a moderate, white-collar coalition for Haley to win a Republican primary in the era of Trump. But come November, it’s a bloc that will decide the 2024 election.

Aaron Black, Washington Post:

A few exit poll findings stand out.

One is that 31 percent of voters said Trump wouldn’t be fit to serve as president if he’s convicted of a crime. South Carolina becomes the third early state to show that at least 3 in 10 voters said a convicted Trump wouldn’t be fit. (We don’t have data for Nevada.)

It may or may not be significant that this week I’ve begun seeing ads for Trump’s Westchester golk club in my Facebook feed. Coincidence? Or is this Trump squeezing every revenue source he’s got? Wikipedia says annual dues are $19,400 a year, which is kind of a budget buster for me, even though it’s a short drive from where I’m living. But he owes the state of New York $454 million, which is racking up an additional $87,502 a day in interest until he pays. He’s gonna have to sell a lot of golf club memberships to cover that. See also ‘Who’s going to do that?’: Trump faces hurdles in securing appeal bond for fraud case.

Update: Actually, the interest is more than $100,000 a day. CBS News this evening:

The judgment in his civil fraud trial was officially entered with the court today — $454,156,783.05 for him alone, plus Trump is now accruing over $100,000 of post-judgment interest each day. 

This is on top of the recent $83.3 million verdict against him in the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial.

Judge Arthur Engoron had already denied Trump’s request to delay the judgment for a month to give Trump more time. I’m beginning to think Trump is not going to be able to pay up without liquidating assests.

The Daily Beast has noticed that Trump may be playing fast and loose with campaign finance laws again. He’s stopped refunding most donations that are in excess of allowable limits. “On paper, Trump’s refund rate is virtually impossible. His campaign has not solved this persistent problem of overpayments. His donors are, in fact, breaking the donation limits—dozens and dozens of them, according to the notices that the FEC sent his campaign after every 2023 filing.”

Trump campaign treasurer Bradley Crate acknowledges the excessive donations. He states that the money has since been “returned” to an affiliated committee, which will be “reflected on a subsequent [campaign] report.”

Crate’s answer, it seems, is that the Trump campaign is forwarding the excessive amounts to other political accounts, potentially raising a host of other issues.

But Crate’s explanation, as written, doesn’t seem explicitly true—at least not at the moment.

According to FEC data, the 2024 Trump campaign has never reported sending any money to that affiliated committee, a joint fundraising committee (JFC) called “Trump Save America.” And that committee’s refund rate also appears low—a total $150,000 out of $129 million raised. By comparison, Haley’s JFC refunded roughly $115,000 while raising $20 million. (In 2022, Trump’s JFC returned $42,000, and just $2,500 the year before.)

You’ll need to read the whole article for the details, but it seens the Trump campaign is using creative accounting to just make the excess donations disappear, or at least they are no longer counted as excess donations. He seems to be trying to sneak them past the FEC as new donations.

In Wisconsin, the state ethics commission has asked that Donald Trump’s joint fundraising committee and some Wisconsin state politicians be prosecuted for campaign violation felonies for things done in relation to the 2022 midterms. Trump can’t even stay out of trouble when he’s not running.

And the Associated Press reports that Trump faces warning signs that his fundraising prowess may have limits in 2024 campaign.

Campaign finance reports released this week flashed bright warning lights, showing two key committees in his political operation raised an anemic $13.8 million in January while collectively spending more than they took in. A major driver of those costs was millions of dollars in legal fees from Trump’s myriad of court cases.

The latest numbers offer only a partial snapshot of the Trump operation’s finances because other branches won’t have to disclose their numbers until April. But Trump’s diminished cashflow presents an alarming picture of the overwhelming favorite to be the GOP’s presidential nominee, particularly to would-be donors who aren’t eager to subsidize Trump’s legal challenges.

Trump’s campaign is turning into the Bottomless Money Pit of campaigns. If he gets his way he’s going to drain the RNC of funds as well. Heh.

In other news: House Republicans have scrubbed the Biden impeachment website of all “evidence” obtained from the Russian operative Alexander Smirnov. Which leaves them with, um, nothing. The Biden impeachment effort has pretty much collapsed. There doesn’t appear to be anywhere close to enough votes to pass a bill of impeachment.

In more other news:  Republicans are scrambling to let America know they aren’t really opposed to In Vitro Fertilization (IVF). Once again, it’s obvious none of these people ever thought out the real-world effects of “embryonic personhood.” Planned Parenthood explains:

A handful of state abortion bans define life as beginning at fertilization, though they don’t specifically target the process of IVF. Other states are attempting to pass legislation that would grant embryos, fetuses and fertilized eggs personhood rights and in some cases constitutional rights.

Such laws would “pose a concrete threat to the routine practice of IVF,” says Daar. The concern is that these laws deem a frozen embryo a human life and that doing things like genetic testing on it during the IVF process, or discarding it, could become illegal.

“If an early embryo is deemed a person for purposes of legal rights and protections, any action short of transfer to the uterus could be seen as violating its right to life under these new laws,” Daar says.

I understand that it’s standard procedure to genetically test the fertilized eggs before transfering them to a uturus, and the eggs that can’t be used are discarded. And do watch Tommy Tuberville being an idiot.

Speaking of not thinking things through, in Texas a woman with an ectopic pregnancy was denied treatment by a hospital. Another hospital was able to save her life, although barely, after the fallopian tube began to rupture.

(WiFi update: I’m not going to say my wifi problems are fixed, because if I say that the wifi gremlins will know and make it go off again. But I haven’t had any glitches so far today.)

Let’s start with something cheerful. Ewan Palmer writes at Newsweek that Jim Jordan is in deep trouble.

A number of legal experts and Democratic figures have now suggested Jordan and other Republicans could face consequences if it is found Russian intelligence was the source of the alleged false bribery claims they said justified the impeachment of Biden.

Jordan’s office has been contacted for comment via email.

Tristan Snell, a lawyer and former assistant attorney general for New York state, claimed on X, formerly Twitter: “Jim Jordan, Chuck Grassley, and James Comer were either duped by Smirnov and the Kremlin—or they were in on it.

I’m gong to guess “duped,” becase we are not exactly talking about the sharpest crayons in the box. See also Jim Jordan fact-checked on live TV at Raw Story.

The story thus far, if you missed it, is that (as we learned last week) the Burisma bribery allegations against Joe Biden were entirely false; the informant, Alexander Smirnov, was lying. And now we know that Smirnov was being fed the allegations by Russian intelligence.

David Kurtz, TPM:

The implications of this Russian operation are staggering, especially for the willing Republicans and right-wing media stooges who were the useful idiots propagating the disinformation for years. The James Comers, Chuck Grassleys, Jim Jordans of the world have been trafficking in this stuff as the purported basis for a Biden impeachment, which is itself tightly yoked to Trump’s campaign for re-election. Right-wing outlets, most notably Fox News, have been amplifying the claims not dozens or hundreds but thousands of times over the past several months.

Everywhere you turn, it’s Russia either helping Trump directly or indirectly by damaging Trump’s foes. The pattern is clear and persistent but also so sweeping and far-reaching that it really requires taking a step back to grasp the full scope of it all. It has dominated right-wing media, become an accepted “fact” among MAGA adherents, and allowed elected Republicans to play mainstream media like a cheap fiddle. All those breathless Biden impeachment process stories? They’re an outgrowth of this disinformation campaign.

Useful idiots, indeed.

There’s more going on, but my wifi has been on again, off again for several hours. I’ve got a techie comng tomorrow. I’m going to post this while it’s working.