The New York Post is reporting that NBC has un-hired ex-RNC chair Ronna McDaniel after most of the senior on-air staff revolted this week. NBC News has yet to issue an announcement, so we’ll see. But when even Chuck Todd pushes back against the establishment, you’re in trouble. And Rachel Maddow pretty much had the last word.

Update: It’s now being announced on MSNBC that McDaniel is out.

In other news: Trump has a new gag order.

The judge presiding over the New York criminal case against Donald Trump on Tuesday slapped the former president with a partial gag order.

The ruling from Judge Juan Merchan orders Trump to “refrain” from “making or directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses concerning their potential participation” in the falsifying business records case, as well as about individual prosecutors, court staff, jurors and potential jurors.

The order does not apply to the judge or Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Today the Supreme Court heard arguments about mifepristone, the so-called abortion pill. The broad consensus in commentary today is that the Court doesn’t seem inclined to restrict the drug. Most of the rightie judges seem mostly concerned that physicians should be able to refuse to perform an abortion if it is against their personal beliefs. Which I’m pretty sure is how things work in this country anyway.

The arguments today included mention of the Comstock Act. I learned about the Comstock Act of 1873 in undergraduate college courses more than 50 years ago, and even then it was presented as some kind of freakish curiosity from less enlightened times. Like Victorian waist-cinchers. Back in the day the Comstock Act prevented information about birth control from being sent in the mail, because birth control was “obscene” and “illicit.” This part of the law was amended in the 1930s. I had not realized the law was still on the books, though. It was kind of unreal to have the Fetus People dredge it up in their argument in favor of a national abortion ban. The BBC reports,

Over the next century, various court rulings clarified the law’s meaning, gradually narrowing its scope. In 1971, Congress removed most of Comstock’s restrictions on contraceptives and two years later, through Roe, the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion. By then, the act was seen as a largely unenforceable relic, and remained dormant for 50 years.

Good morning! As I write this, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan is about to begin a hearing in the hush money case brought by Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg. I understand Trump has just arrived at the courthouse.

I hope Trump enjoyed staying in his gaudy penthouse apartment in Trump Tower. Hard to say how many more times he can stay there. His appeal bond is due today.

Today’s hearing is to discuss the belated disclosure of records and to re-set the trial date. .

NY Times:

Merchan doesn’t have a whole lot of patience for Trump’s attempt to take the late release of the Southern District documents and spin it, through the barrage of papers filed by his lawyers last week, into a broader narrative of prosecutorial shenanigans and misconduct.

There is no news anywhere saying that Trump will have the money to post his appeal bond, btw.

NY Times, again:

It is clear that Merchan is interested right now only in the timing of this trial. He is pressing Trump’s lawyers on the number of documents they think are relevant, but he says: “I just want to get a sense of how much time you need.”

NBC News reports that Trump wants to be compared to Jesus.

While Trump was sitting in the courtroom, the former president’s Truth Social account posted a message purportedly from a supporter that compared Trump to Jesus. Trump is not using his phone in the courtroom so it seems like a staffer posted it.

The post connected the timing of the hearing to Easter saying “It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you.”

Trump called the sentiment “beautiful”.

According to the prosecutors, a big chunk of the recently released documents are Michael Cohen’s bank records.

NY Times:

1 minute ago

Alan Feuer

When the judge questions your professional biography, it’s probably time to change tactics.

 

NBC News:

The subtext of this entire hearing has been Judge Merchan appearing highly suspicious of the defense team’s effort to delay this trial. He’s pressing Blanche to now explain why he waited until this past January to request documents he likely knew existed last spring. He’s even brought up Blanche’s past experience in the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York to highlight he should know the diligence that’s required.

“Why did you wait until two months before trial. Why didn’t you do it in June or July,” Merchan asks.

 “It’s not our job,” says Blanche. Merchan shoots back that it’s not the D.A.’s job either.

The hearing is in recess.

Here we go: I’m seeing that the appeals court will allow Trump to post a smaller bond of $175 million within 10 days. 

I don’t know if A.G. Tish James could appeal that to a higher court.

[Update: I sincerely hope that Trump’s “babysitter,” Barbara Jones, be required to keep track on Trump’s business dealings and distribution of assets and keep reporting back to the court to be sure Trump has the means to pay the penalty when he loses his appeal. And when the time comes if Trump lacks the assets to pay the entire pentalty,. I think those five judges on the appeals court panel should have to make up the difference out of their own pockets.]

Here is the appeals court statement on the bond.

From the New York Daily News:

A New York appeals court showed Donald Trump some mercy Monday, allowing him to post a bond of $175 million in his civil fraud case — rather than half a billion — to ward off foreclosures while he appeals. 

In a brief order, the First Dept. Court of Appeals agreed to pause enforcement of the the most severe elements of the devastating February court decision finding Trump liable for fraud while he appeals it if he secures a portion of the money he’s been ordered to pay within 10 days.  …

… The appeals court also paused other parts of Engoron’s judgment from taking effect, including industry bans against Trump, his sons, Eric and Don Jr, and former finance execs Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney. They said the extended and enhanced role of court-appointed monitors to babysit Trump’s company would remain in place. 

The AG’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Trump’s lawyers in his fraud case. 

Switching back to the hush money case, the Judge has set the new trial date for April 15. The Judge also ruled that no harm was done to Trump’s legal defense.

Trump Appeal Bond Watch: It’s Friday afternoon, and there’s still no bond. Nor have we heard from an appeals court. It’s reported that Trump posted today in ALL CAPS on his toy social media platform that he has $500 million in cash right now. Of course he does.

See also Josh Marshall.

As we can see, the New York State civil judgment against Donald Trump, totaling roughly $450 million, and Trump’s seeming inability to post a bond for the amount in order to appeal the judgment, is the real deal. But it has also reminded us, brought us back to the Russian nesting doll, the infinitely layered onion of Donald Trump not being real. The effort to collect the judgment spins us right back around to why there is a judgment in the first place. Trump is now fundraising off threats to “seize Trump Tower.” The New York Post is headlining the same basic idea. But as a friend reminded me yesterday evening, Trump doesn’t own Trump Tower. …

… At one level this is entirely obvious if you think about it. Trump Tower is owned by the people who own the apartment units. It’s not just apartment units of course. And … well, a lot of those are owned by foreigners trying to hide money in the U.S. But I digress. What he actually owns at Trump Tower is “the parking garage, the valet booth, room-service kitchens, lobby bathrooms, a restaurant space, and one unit.”

Even in Manhattan, a valet booth may not be worth that much.

But now I feel compelled to look at Congress. Congress is on shutdown brink again. I had thought there was a funding deal a few days ago. I guess I was wrong.  The House did pass a spending bill today to fund the government through September. We do not know if the Senate will be able to pass it before the shutdown begins at the end of today. I understand this is possible but doubtful.

Oh, and Marjorie Taylor Greene is on the warpath.

“This was our leverage,” Ms. Greene said of spending legislation. “This is our chance to secure the border, and he didn’t do it. And now this funding bill passed without the majority of the majority.”

I guess she was planning to hold the government hostage to pass a border security bill like the one she helped kill a few weeks ago. Got it. If she does decide to see, a vote on ousting McCarthy, House Dems have said they will vote to keep him if he allows a vote on funding Ukraine.

And the majority is about to become less of a majority. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) announced he will resign from Congress on April 19. And with the imminent departure of Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), the House soon will be Republicans  217, Demolcrats 214. Matt Stieb writes at New York magazine that Gallagher’s departure will take the Republican majority down to one seat, but I’m not sure how he comes to that calculation. It looks like three seats to me. Maybe you can figure it out.

First, you need to see this headline from Vanity Fair.

Let it not be forgot that Jared was the guy who killed a plan for the federal government to direct pandemic supplies like PPE to where they were needed. This was while covid was slamming New York City especially hard. Jared decided this was a good thing. From the Vanity Fair article:

Yes, in a February interview at Harvard that was posted online this month and uncovered by the Guardian on Tuesday, Kushner opined that the Gaza Strip could be “very valuable” from a real estate perspective, if Israel could forcibly remove everyone currently living there to develop “waterfront property.” Speaking to Harvard professor Tarek Masoud, Kushner said: “It’s a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but from Israel’s perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.” Where does Kushner suggest these people go? Ivanka Trump’s husband explained that if he were in charge of Israel, his top priority would be removing the people living in Rafah—a Palestinian city in southern Gaza—and moving them into Egypt “with diplomacy.” And that wasn’t his only piece of advice: “In addition to that,” he said, “I would just bulldoze something in the Negev, I would try to move people in there…. I think that’s a better option, so you can go in and finish the job.”

Such a mensch. Come to think of it, we never did hear what Jared was doing with all the supplies he was confiscating from states during covid. Somebody should really follow up on that.

So it’s Thursday and Trump still hasn’t coughed up a bond. Bloomberg is reporting that Attorney General James may be planning to go after Trump’s Westchester properties first.

New York state’s $454 million judgment against Donald Trump in a civil fraud lawsuit was formally registered in Westchester County just outside Manhattan, a sign that his properties in the area may be at risk of being seized if the former president fails to post an appeal bond.

New York Attorney General Letitia James registered the judgment on March 6, according to the Westchester County Clerk’s online database. The filing didn’t give a reason for the registration or identify any Trump assets, but it will allow James to more easily secure liens, should she decide to do so, on two of the real estate mogul’s most valuable properties: Trump National Golf Club Westchester and the mostly undeveloped 212-acre Seven Springs estate.

The Golf Club is maybe a couple of miles from where I’m living now, which is why I think it would be fun if it became public property. But I guess that wouldn’t happen right away.

Seven Springs featured heavily in the trial, and Engoron ruled the property had been wildly overvalued for years. Trump purchased the estate in 1995 for $7.5 million. It consists of two large homes, undeveloped land and a few other buildings. Trump valued the property at more than five times the appraised values in some years — as high as $291 million — often by including the value of mansions that didn’t exist.

This afternoon Judge Arthur Engoron ordered Trump to inform his court-appointed financial watchdog about any future efforts to obtain an appeal bond.

In his order Thursday, Engoron told the Trump Organization it must tell its financial overseer, Barbara Jones, “in advance, of any efforts to secure surety bonds.”

The company must tell Jones about any claims the Trump Organization makes to obtain the bonds, any personal guarantees by Trump or other defendants, and any condition imposed on the company.

That level of disclosure would well exceed what Trump has disclosed about a $91.6 million appeal bond he recently received from a Chubb insurance subsidiary to secure a civil defamation judgment in favor of the writer E. Jean Carroll.

Jones, who is a retired federal judge, was appointed by Engoron as the financial monitor for the Trump Organization. The company has chafed under her oversight, complaining about her in filings with Engoron.

Memo to Trump: Nobody trusts you. But the Wall Street Journal is reporting (from what I read elsewhere; it’s behind a firewall) that Trump will soon enjoy a a $3.5 billion windfall for taking Truth Social public, or something This makes no sense to me; does anyone other than Trump post on Truth Social? But we’ll see.

In other weird criminal justice news, the Mar-a-Lago documents case seems to be going south on a freight train. See ‘Very, very troubling’: Judges, lawyers flummoxed by Judge Cannon at WaPo.

This just in from the New York Times:

Donald J. Trump’s lawyers disclosed on Monday that he had failed to secure a roughly half-billion dollar bond in his civil fraud case in New York, arguing that doing so was “a practical impossibility.”

The filing, coming one week before the bond is due, raised the prospect that the former president might face a financial crisis unless an appeals court comes to his rescue. Mr. Trump has asked the appeals court to pause the $454 million judgment that a New York judge imposed on Mr. Trump last month, or accept a bond of only $100 million.

The former president has been unable to secure the full bond, his lawyers said in the court filing on Monday, despite “diligent efforts.” Those efforts included approaching about 30 companies, and yet, they said, he has encountered “insurmountable difficulties.”

So about thirty companies consider him too bad a credit risk to lend him that much money. The deadline — after which Letitia James can start seizing Trump’s assets — is March 25.

Axios is reporting that “Trump’s lawyers have asked an appeals court to delay the bond posting until his appeal of the case has run its court.” No way is Letitia James going to agree to that. We’ll see if someone gives him more time to come up with the money. I understand he’s got big mortgages on some of his signature properties, so clearing that much cash may be a reach.

In other news:

The “Plan” seems to be to destroy the November general election and declare Trump the winner. To illlustrate, this happened recently in Arizona:

As the board of supervisors for Arizona’s largest county abruptly ended a meeting late last month, a swarm of people rushed toward the dais, shouting that the members were illegitimate.

The Maricopa County leaders made a beeline for a side door and were swiftly escorted out of the chamber by security guards, who called for backup from the sheriff’s office. After the meeting’s live-feed went dead, a member of the crowd yelled that a “revolution” was underway.

“I’m here today to put you on public notice and to inform you that you are not our elected officials,” said Michelle Klann, co-founder of a pro-Trump group, from a podium she had commandeered. “This is an act of insurrection. Due to all the voter fraud, you have never been formally voted in.” …

…“This was an organized, coordinated attack,” said one top county official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters. “It was a dress rehearsal for the election.”

And, of course, later in the article it said,

In the case of last month’s meeting, the action taken ended peacefully.Outnumbered, the county’s security staff waited for sheriff’s deputies as they calmly ushered out the approximately 20-person crowd. No arrests were made.

They’ve got to start arresting these brownshirts and introducing them to the criminal justice system. This is ridiculous.

Kari Lake and Mike Lindell have petitioned the Supreme Court to declare electronic voting unconstitutional. This is an old suit filled by Lake that has been slapped down vigorously by lower courts, so Lake, joined by Lindell, are taking it to the top. “The MyPillow CEO spent much of last week hyping the lawsuit, making multiple appearances on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast—in between plugs for his percale sheets—to tease ‘the most explosive evidence ever’ that is ‘going to save this country’ and ‘shock the world,’ The Arizona Republic reported.”

And now that the Trump family is running the RNC, the RNC is opposing early and mail-in voting. Instead of trying to win more Republican voters, the strategy is to suppress Democratic votes.

Last month True the Vote had to admit to a court that it had no evidence for its election fraud claims. But they’re going forward with the program anyway.

What to do when the rules don’t matter

This Monday we’ll discuss recent examples of lawlessness and talk through strategies to stand your ground. From free speech to personal security, US Elections to Agenda 2030, let’s plan now for what may be coming soon.@onwardsocial… pic.twitter.com/crNqOkVPt6

— True the Vote (@TrueTheVote) March 17, 2024

Meanwhile, Trump’s rhetoric continues to be unethered to reality.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, confused the crowd at an appearance in Vandalia by insisting that Biden had beaten “Barack Hussein Obama” in elections nationally that never took place.

Freewheeling during a speech in which his teleprompters were seemingly disabled by high winds, Trump – a frequent critic of the 81-year-old Biden’s age and mental acuity – struggled to pronounce the words “bite” and “largest”. And he left the crowd scratching their heads over the reference to Obama, whom Biden served as vice-president from 2009 to 2017 before taking the Oval Office from Trump in 2020.

“You know what’s interesting? Joe Biden won against Barack Hussein Obama. Has anyone ever heard of him? Every swing state, Biden beat Obama but in every other state, he got killed,” Trump said.

It’s one thing to mix up a name or a place, but imagining elections that never happened is not a “normal” senior moment thing.

Back in 2015 I was furious with my senator, Chuck Schumer, for opposing the Obama Administration’s nuclear deal with Iran. According to several sources, Schumer opposed the deal because Bibi Netanyahu asked him to. I sent Chuck a sternly worded email about it, as I recall, vowing to never vote for him again. (And I didn’t, although I was living in Missouri the next time he ran.) Eventually Chuck and the mostly Republicans who opposed the deal were defeated. (Of course a certain Great Orange Idiot canceled the agreement some time later, promising he could negotiate something better, which he never even attempted to do. But that’s another rant.)

I take it Chuck’s speech of last week calling for new elections in Israel landed like a bomb in Israel. See, for example,  Schumer’s anti-Netanyahu speech stuns Israel at Axios.

In addition to being the most senior Jewish elected official in the country, Schumer has had one of the longest and closest relationships with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of any U.S. politician.

Schumer’s speech stunned officials and observers in both Washington and Jerusalem because he has been — and still is — the Democratic Party’s most avid supporter of Israel in decades.

His harsh remarks about Netanyahu create more political space for other Democratic members of Congress to publicly voice their criticism of the Israeli government amid the ongoing war in Gaza.

Pro-Palestinian protesters are giving themselves credit for Schumer’s shift in position, but I suspect what really happened is that he started hearing from Jewish constituents saying they were opposed to the Netanyahu government’s wholesale destruction of Gaza. See From her lips to Chuck’s ears: Schumer’s rabbi weighs in on his Israel speech.

“In this speech, he said what most of us think,” Timoner, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim, said in an interview with POLITICO. “There’s been a real fear in the American Jewish community of criticizing Israel. … He did something so great in breaking that silence.”

Schumer has attended Timoner’s synagogue near his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn for at least a decade. Timoner officiated his daughter’s wedding, blessed his three grandchildren and buried his father.

I’m reading that no one expects Netanyahu to change his course because of Schumer’s speech. The U.S. Right is outgaged about it, and Netanyahu probably figures if Trump wins re-election he can count on infinite support from the U.S. going forward. It does give President Biden more room to maneuver, though. For so long criticism of Israel has been something of a third rail here, and that has to change.

In other news: The Washington Post is running an opinion piece by Kathleen Parker headlined “For the country’s sake, Vice President Harris should step aside.” I’m not going to link to it because it’s garbage, but it’s easily found on their editorial page today.

Parker’s opening sentence is “The Democratic Party’s indulgence of identity politics has proved successful in building a diverse organization, but its strategy of courting (and pandering to) minority voters is the road to ruin.” OMG.

And then Parker goes on to trash Harris for … what, exactly? It’s not clear. Parker calls Harris’s speeches “rambling,” which is not something I’ve ever noticed. And she accuses Harris of having a bad laugh. A representative paragraph:

Whatever the reasons, it has seemed that Harris’s role was to be quiet, lest she embarrass her boss with her sometimes inane, rambling remarks and a laugh that erupts from nowhere about nothing obvious to others. I do, however, relish the thought of her face-to-face with Vladimir Putin and suddenly cackling at a linchpin moment during nuclear arms discussions.

I am old enough to remember Dwight Eisenhower being president, and in all those years I’ve noticed that the role of vice president is a mostly thankless one that doesn’t let anyone shine too brightly. But if Parker thinks that it would be good for Joe Biden’s election chances to switch veeps now — to another white guy, I assume — she’s a flaming idiot. The erupting controversy would drown out anything else the Biden Administration is trying to present. (Does the name “Thomas Eagleton” ring any bells?) Whatever “safe” candidate is chosen will still be ripped to shreds in right-wing media.

I’m absolutely disgusted with Kathleen Parker, and if any of you want to complain to WaPo about her, please don’t let me discourage you.

Update: See Your Regular Reminder That We Knew About Kathleen Parker’s Bigotry Years Ago at No More Mister Nice Blog.

This just in — Judge Says Fani Willis Can Stay on Trump Case, but Only if Former Romantic Partner Leaves No paywall.

“An Atlanta judge on Friday ruled that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton Country district attorney, could continue leading the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia, but only if her former romantic partner, Nathan J. Wade, withdraws as the lead prosecutor of the case.” Some other news outlets are reporting that the Judge said either Willis or Wade have to leave. But I assume that means bye bye, Wade.

Update: Wade has resigned, so as of now Fani Willis is free to prepare for trial.

I want to go back to something Josh Marshall wrote a couple of days ago, Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch? No paywall. Here’s the meat of it:

There is a key difference here that is important to understand. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s success stemmed in large part from channeling the cultural and social grievance of middle aged white American men. His 2024 agenda is heavily focused on his personal grievances and doing away with all the restraints on the presidency that hobbled him and led to ego injuries in during his first term — Trump Unbound, as it were. 

A big chunk of the voters probably still are not all that focused on the November election and haven’t seen much of Trump recently. He really isn’t the same now.

One of Trump’s 2015/2016 super powers was that he’d come out of American popular culture — the core of it, which is to say, reality TV. These days he sits around Mar-a-Lago, talks to sycophants and prepares for new court dates. You can see a lot of the degeneration in his social media communication on Truth Social. As you know, I considered myself something of an aficionadoof rhythmic ferality of Trump’s 2015–2020 Twitter presence (see “Trump Attack Haiku“). The stuff today on Truth Social is entirely different, a kind of digital equivalent of pressured speech, packing a mix of All-Caps yelling and Trumpian buzzwords into one unstructured blob or loaf of bloated menace. He’s not the same.

Trump went into 2016 with a con man’s instincts for telling people what they wanted to hear. And he lucked out with a Democratic opponent who ran a massively tone deaf campaign. Unlike in 2016, he’s now surrounded with a “cast of ideologues who have created a program for him.” And a lot of that is massively unpopular stuff, like raising the retirement age or cutting Medicare. Plus he’s in a real box on abortion, which he wasn’t in 2016 or 2020.

I’m guessing that about a third of the voters would jump off a 90-foot cliff if Trump told them to, but I do believe there’s a big chunk of people who will find him a much less palatable candidate than he was before, once they start to focus. The challenge, though, is to get them comfortable with voting for Biden. And I think that’s do-able if enough Biden surrogates get out there and get to work. See also Philip Bump, Trump goes on a weird riff about acid — again about Trump’s increasingly hallucinatory rhetoric.

But let’s also step back and look at what Trump is doing to the Republican Party. I read today that Trump’s RNC officially killed the GOP’s mail-in voter effort. Trump still tells the story that fraudulent mail-in votes cost him the 2020 election, which is a crock, and there is data that shows mail-in voting may favor Republican candidates more than Democrats. But Trump and his people seem more interested in throwing legal challenges at voting itself.

This appears to be a realization of the far right’s goal of focusing the Republican Party on election-related “lawfare,” that is legal challenges designed to restrict ballot access and undercut election systems in ways that make it harder to vote. Back in 2022, I reported that this vision was behind right-wing lawyer Harmeet Dhillon’s long-shot bid to become RNC chair. Dhillon insisted that the RNC needed to hire an army of lawyers to lob legal challenges ahead of the 2024 elections.

Nothing screams “We can’t win a majority of voters fairly” like prioritizing legal attacks on voting rights. But that’s precisely what the Trump-branded RNC is preparing to do. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and the current RNC co-chair, claimed “massive resources” will go to its so-called election integrity division.

So, head’s up. And of course the Trump family/campaign has taken complete control of the RNC, including the financial part, so Trump will be tapping that money for his own purposes and letting the down-ballot candidates fend for themselves. And see Bess Levin, Over 100 House Republicans Will Skip GOP Retreat Because They Hate Each Other So Much: Report.

CNN reports that “many Republicans plan to skip the [upcoming] House GOP retreat as they grumble about both the location and the idea of spending time with one another.” According to the outlet, fewer than 100 Republicans have said they will attend, meaning more than 119 either have previous engagements or would rather do literally anything else than breathe the same air as their fellow representatives. While some cited reelection races as the reason for their absence, and others have “complained about the venue choice” selected by Speaker Mike Johnson, a number of GOP lawmakers and aides “told CNN they were simply not enthusiastic about the idea of having to huddle with the rest of their party at a time when Republican infighting has prevented them from even passing procedural votes.”

The days when Republicans speak and move as one hive mind are over, I guess.

The rest of the year until November could go a lot of different ways. But one of the ways it could go — not predicting it will, mind you — is that the party itself implodes at some point.

In other news: I’m not always happy with my senator, Chuck Schumer, but he stood up in the Senate today and sent a message to Israel about Bibi Netanyahu. This is better.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for the Israeli government to hold a new election in a speech warning that Israel risks becoming an international “pariah” under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet.

Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish official in the United States and a staunch ally of Israel, said he thinks Israelis understand “better than anybody that Israel cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world” and would choose better leaders if elections were held.

Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated President Biden’s retention of classified documents and portrayed him as a senile old man in his report, is testifying to Gym Jordan’s Fishing Expedition Committee today. Note that as of yesterday Hur is no longer an employee of the Justice Department and is testifying as a private citizen. And he’s got an attorney with a history of defending right-wingers. I have no sense of how that’s been going.

But this morning the DoJ released a slightly redacted transcript of the interview between Biden and Hur, and news outlets are discovering that Hur mischaracterized Biden’s statements rather badly. See Matt Gertz T Media Matters, News outlets that trumpeted Hur’s story now discover “context” and “nuance” in transcript. It seems the full transcript shows that the President sometimes stumbled on names and dates but otherwise knew what he was talking about. So the New York Times and Wshington Post and other news outlets are walking back the truckload of stories they ran questioing Biden’s mental fitness.

I have no doubt that Gym and other MAGAs will latch on to something Hur says today so they can continue to flog their claim that Joe Biden is too senile to put on his own socks. But both sides can play that game.

In other news: GOP Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado has announced he’ll be leaving the House at the end of next week. He’s not going to bother to finish his term. I’m reading that House seats can’t be filled with an appointed replacement, so there would have to be a special election to replace Buck. And the Republican majority in the House keeps shrinking.

In more other news: You probably won’t be surprised to learn that there is no migrant-fueled crime wave going on.

Republican politicians and sympathetic media outlets are claiming that America is in the midst of a violent “crime wave,” driven in part by undocumented immigrants. New data, however, demonstrates that there was not a spike in violent crime in 2023. Instead, across America, rates of violent crime are dropping precipitously — and the decline is especially pronounced in border states. …

… Notably, the two border states that have completed their Uniform Crime Reports saw particularly sharp declines in murder in 2023, with 15% drop in Texas and 8.8% drop in Arizona. Both states also saw significant declines in violent crime overall. If undocumented immigrants were driving a violent crime surge, as Republicans and some media outlets suggest, you would expect to see it show up in the data from Texas and Arizona. 

See the linked article from Popular Information for data and sources. Basically this is preliminary data from fifteen states that eventually will go into the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report. But there are studies and data going back years showing that migrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born good ol’ boys.

You’ll remember last week that MTG was using the murder of Laken Riley, a nursing student who was killed while out on an exercise run, to make some point about migrants. Being murdered while running appears to be a whole sub-genre of violent crime. Most of the victims are women, but not always — remember Ahmaud Arbery? Of course you do. (Ahmaud Arbery was from Georgia, too, but I don’t remember MTG getting worked up about him the way she’s worked up about Riley Laken. Odd.)  A lot of these murders are unsolved. When they are solved, the perpetrator (when the victim is a woman) tends to have a history of violence against women. See, for example, the Eliza Fletcher murder.

Now see Will Leitch, The Murder on My Running Trail, at New York Magazine. The author lives in the same community as Riley Laken and runs on the same trail she took on the day she was murdered. And his wife is a runner, too. “She has told me how often she feels watched on her runs,” Leitch writes. “How she has been followed. How she has been spit at. How she was even once swung at. I have never had any of those fears, not once. Because I am a man.”

The murder of Riley Laken shook the Athens, Georgia, running community hard.

Riley’s murder, the first homicide on campus in more than 30 years, sent a wave of terror through Athens, but it hit the running community particularly hard. Fear was palpable among women runners in the first 24 hours after her death, and their stories made it clear that what I — along with many of my fellow male runners — had thoughtlessly considered a safe, solitary activity has always been far more fraught for half the population. Women spoke of the precautions they constantly have to take, from going out with running buddies to avoiding isolated areas to carrying alert systems, weapons, or even Tasers with them anytime they leave the house. (My primary concern when I set out is whether I remembered my headphones.) Riley’s assault and murder — one of several involving women runners in recent years — was a reminder that every time women go for a run, they have to be conscious of the possibility of male violence. Or, more accurately: They have to be as conscious of the possibility of male violence as they always are. My wife reminded me of the Margaret Atwood quote: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

That was the conversation until an undocumented immigrant was charged with the murder. Suddenly everyone stopped talking about male violence. And every Republican politician in Georgia blamed Joe Biden for Riley Laken’s death.

It’s like violent crime doesn’t count until a migrant is the perpetrator. But here’s something else I found today about homicides in the U.S.

In 2020, there were 2,059 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents that were submitted to the FBI for its Supplementary Homicide Report. 12 The key findings of this study, expanded upon in the following sections, dispel many of the myths regarding the nature of lethal violence against females.

• • For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 89 percent of female victims (1,604 out of 1,801) were murdered by a male they knew.
  • Eight times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,604 victims) than were killed by male strangers (197 victims).
  • For victims who knew their offenders, 60 percent (967) of female homicide victims were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers.13
  • There were 298 women shot and killed by either their husband or intimate acquaintance during the course of an argument.

Odds are that at least some of those women are killed in Georgia. But in MTG’s world their deaths don’t count.

In other misdirected violent crime news, by now you’ve heard that Sen. Katie Britt, in her State of the Union rebuttal for the ages, told a graphic story about sex trafficking in Texas and blamed it on President Biden. Turns out this happened 20 years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, and in Mexico. As far as I know, Britt has yet to apologize for telling a lie.

Update: Aaron Blake at WaPo provides an account of what went on in the hearing today.

I’ve been looking for any information on the appeal bond posted by Trump yesterday. And we don’t know much.This is from Alternet —

The ex-president’s bond was guaranteed by the Federal Insurance Company — a New York-based subsidiary of the company Chubb Group LLC, which is headquartered in Switzerland. In 2018, Chubb CEO Evan Greenberg served on a trade advisory committee in the Trump White House. The Washington Post reported that “it was not clear from court records what collateral Trump presented to obtain the bond from Chubb.”

We don’t know what was put up for collateral, we don’t know if it was co-signed, we don’t know what fee Trump is being required to pay. Seems a tad hinky. Some commenters are breathlessly noting that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was at Mar-a-Lago yesterday and wondering if Orbán was involved in securing the loan. That’s pure speculation, note. Orbán came to the U.S. to meet with Trump but is not meeting with President Biden, which is definately hinky.

Trump has now officially taken over the RNC, so watch the RNC budget get drained on behalf of Trump. You down-ballot candidates are on your own.

In other Mar-a-Lago news, this is from Joyce Vance yesterday —

In the Mar-a-Lago case, two additional prosecutors filed their notices of appearance, the formal way a lawyer advises a judge they will be participating in a case. One of those lawyers handled Trump’s appeal on presidential immunity to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, leading to widespread speculation Jack Smith is gearing up to appeal Judge Aileen Cannon to the Eleventh Circuit.

Cannon will have to issue an appealable order before that can happen. But that moment may well come when she rules on pending classified discovery issues or Trump’s request to make the names of witnesses public.

We can hope.

The fallout from Thursday night continues, including the trashing of Sen. Katie Britt. I get the impression that Republicans are projecting all their frustrations at having been owned at the SOTU onto her. She may or may not have a career after this. But here’s a fun read about her — Is Katie Britt for Real?