#Adam Zyglis

[tomorrowusa]

Reminding people about Trump's Project 2025 and his promise to be a "dictator on Day One" do not promote violence. Republican pandering to the NRA has actually killed people.

Trump's wannabe assassins, both the registered Republican and the 2016 Trump voter, used assault rifles.

There was an assault weapons ban in the US from 1994 to 2004. During that period the number of people murdered in mass shootings declined.

When that ban expired, the Republican trifecta in Washington at the time refused to extend it. Mass shootings then soared.

As for "inflammatory rhetoric"...

J.D. Vance, Whining About Democrats, Seems to Forget Trump’s Own Words

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News: The Opus Dei Court's view on regulation

(Robert Scott Horton)

[aunti-christ-ine]

[miniyo]

“Dilbert”, una de las tiras de prensa más populares de Estados Unidos, deja de publicarse en la mayoría de los medios tras las declaraciones racistas de su autor, Scott Adams.

Adam Zyglis, en The Cagle Post  [web]

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[rosielindy]

[imkeepinit]

Political cartoons by Adam Zyglis and Rob Rogers.

[azspot]

Adam Zyglis

[antidrumpfs]

Cartoon by Adam Zyglis

[editorialtoons]

Adam Zyglis-Buffalo News

June 25, 2024: Louisiana Schools

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]

[tomorrowusa]

Katie Stallard who is a political writer from the UK points out in The New Statesman exactly where three of the six SCOTUS votes enabling Trump immunity came from.

Many observers will also view the ruling as the logical conclusion of the former president’s efforts, along with the then Senate leader Mitch McConnell, to pack the court with conservatives, adding three such justices – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – to the bench during his four-year term. Public trust in the Supreme Court was already at an all-time low, with just 28 per cent of Americans saying that they believed Supreme Court justices would be fair and impartial in a June poll by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Along with the decision to overturn Roe vs Wade last year – which had protected the right to an abortion for half a century – this latest decision will only compound the perception among many that this is now an activist court with a conservative agenda. This is particularly concerning given the crucial role the court could play in determining the outcome of a closely contested election this year.

Rightwingers in this country have had a long term agenda which they have mostly stuck to. Almost immediately after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision they began their efforts to gain control of the Supreme Court. It took 49 years but the Court finally reversed Roe in 2022.

In that period some progressives behaved like the distracted boyfriend meme. When a politically sexy but ephemeral third party or fashionably lefty temptation appeared on the scene those distracted progressives foolishly embraced it and ended up empowering Republicans.

For gaining power and keeping power in the US it's necessary to put long term goals ahead of short term titillations. And part of that means educating folks on how government works in real life — not relying on things like simplistic stick-figure diagrams on how a bill becomes law or how presidents are elected.

Taking back SCOTUS and amending the US Constitution will take years and won't be easy. But if we don't start learning from the persistence and successes of Republicans then things will only continue to deteriorate for democracy.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Adam Zyglis

* * * * *

 On a day filled with competing motions and orders, let’s start at the end with the good news, and work our way backward. Judge Tanya Chutkan set a hearing “no later than Friday of this week” regarding the government’s motion for a protective order in the J6 prosecution in D.C. In setting the hearing, Judge Chutkan again served notice that she will not brook efforts by Trump's attorneys to delay and prejudice the J6 criminal trial. As with Judge Chutkan’s order over the weekend denying Trump's request for an extension to file briefing, the latest order should provide all Americans with reason to believe Trump will be held to account in a fair trial before a jury of his peers—sooner rather than later.

          Now let’s look at the messy path to that tidy ending.

          The day began with another attack on Judge Chutkan by Trump, who posted that

[Jack Smith] is going before his number one draft pick, the Judge of his ‘dreams’ (WHO MUST BE RECUSED!)”

          Trump's public statement implying that Judge Chutkan is biased is not a winning strategy. Indeed, only two weeks into John Lauro’s representation of Trump, the attorney and client are at odds over whether Trump should file an immediate motion to recuse Judge Chutkan. See Politico, Trump and his new lawyer are not on the same page about judge’s recusal. Indeed, Trump's above attack on Judge Chutkan came after John Lauro said on Monday morning,

We haven’t made a final decision on that issue [recusal]. I think as lawyers we have to be very careful of those issues and handle them with the utmost delicacy.

          Since Trump has handled nothing in his life with the “utmost delicacy,” we should expect to see increasing tension between Trump and his current temporary lawyer, John Lauro.

          As ordered by Judge Chutkan, Trump's attorneys filed a response to the motion for a protective order shortly before 5:00 PM on Monday. The response said, in effect, “Yeah, we plan to use sensitive discovery provided by the prosecution to try this case in the court of public opinion—just as the prosecution claims.”

          For non-lawyers in the crowd, you should know that is NOT a winning argument when opposing a motion for a protective order. An even worse argument—made by Trump's attorneys—is that they want to share sensitive information with “volunteer attorneys” who are not officially part of Trump's defense team. See MSN, Trump seeks latitude in sharing evidence in Jan. 6 case with public and ‘volunteer attorneys’.  The reference to “volunteer attorneys” is broad enough to cover un-indicted co-conspirator Rudy Giuliani.

          Three hours later, the prosecution replied to Trump's brief, saying:

“The defendant’s proposed order would lead to the public dissemination of discovery material. Indeed, that is the defendant’s stated goal; the defendant seeks to use the discovery material to litigate this case in the media.

“There is no right to publicly release discovery material, because the discovery process is designed to ensure a fair process before the Court, not to provide the defendant an opportunity to improperly press his case in the court of public opinion.”

          There is more, but you get the picture. But the above back-and-forth is worth hearing once—because it will be a constant theme over the next twelve months before trial.

          Now let’s compare Judge Chutkan’s firm handling of the J6 proceeding to Judge Cannon’s bizarre ruling on Monday in the defense secrets case.

The verdict is in: Judge Cannon is the most incompetent judge in the federal judiciary!

          On Monday, we learned that we no longer need to waste time wondering if Judge Cannon is the most incompetent judge in the federal judiciary. She is! So, take that issue off your plate for the duration of the defense secrets proceeding (or until she is forcibly recused from the case, which should be soon).

          To make a needlessly long story short, the prosecution in the defense secrets case asked Judge Cannon to determine if attorney Stanley Woodward has a conflict of interest in representing multiple defendants and witnesses in that case. In short, some of Woodward’s former clients will be testifying against his current clients. An attorney cannot represent multiple clients/former clients with directly adverse interests except under narrowly prescribed circumstances.

          To support its motion, the prosecution filed exhibits under seal (i.e., confidentially). The motion should have been routine.

          Instead, Judge Cannon refused to accept the government’s exhibits filed under seal and asked defendant Walt Nauta how he felt about the government trying to use grand jury testimony from an ongoing investigation in another jurisdiction.

          What Judge Cannon did was incompetent and biased. It is incompetent because she should not have disclosed the existence of a secret grand jury investigation that is ongoing in a different jurisdiction. As Andrew Weissman tweeted,

"Judge Cannon clearly shows her ignorance (bias? both?); the obstruction crimes that were investigated are charges that could have been brought in Florida or in DC and thus could be investigated in either district. And there was conduct that is alleged to have occurred outside of Florida.”

          Nor is Judge Cannon Walt Nauta’s attorney; she should not be suggesting specious arguments for Nauta to raise in his defense.

          The reaction against Judge Cannon’s order was swift and brutal. Professor Tribe said,

“Judge Cannon continues her dopey and constitutionally dubious usurpation of the executive branch’s investigative and prosecutorial prerogatives.”

          Joyce Vance tweeted,

“Looks like it is a good week [for the prosecution] to ask the 11th Circuit to replace the judge.”

          Judge Cannon’s order was either incompetent or biased, as Andrew Weissman noted. Either way, her shelf life on the defense secrets case is limited. Given the humiliating rebuke issued by the 11th Circuit in the search warrant case brought by Trump, you would think Cannon would go out of her way not to make stupid mistakes. She apparently can’t—or won’t—help herself. The best thing she can do to preserve any hope of rehabilitating her future reputation is to issue a voluntary order removing herself from the case. But, it’s only a matter of time. She can do it, or the 11th Circuit can do it for her.

More importantly, we now know that Jack Smith is not done investigating the defense secrets case.

          An upside of Judge Cannon’s disclosure of an ongoing grand jury proceeding is that we now know that Jack Smith is not done investigating the defense secrets case. For example, the other proceeding referred to by Cannon might be in New Jersey, where Trump transported and disclosed the existence of one highly confidential document relating to the US plan of attack against Iran. That is a positive sign.

          Another positive sign appeared in the Washington Post on Monday, which reported that Jack Smith is still pursuing additional indictments in the fake electors scheme:

“The Smith investigation into the electors does not appear to be over. In recent days, federal prosecutors have issued a new raft of subpoenas about the elector scheme in multiple states, according to people with knowledge of their activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.”

          Together, the above disclosures suggest that Jack Smith is not resting after indicting Trump in Florida and D.C. He appears to be preparing other indictments relating to the attempted coup and the unlawful retention of defense secrets.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[aunti-christ-ine]

...however, I've still got that aching feeling we're all gonna get Muellered in the end... ☹️

[miniyo]

Adam Zyglis en The Cagle Post, https://www.cagle.com/

[web] https://www.adamzyglis.com/ [twitter] @adamzyglis [facebook] https://www.facebook.com/zyglis

[silocityreadingseries]

Silo City Reading Series, 2021

[route22ny]

Cartoon by the Pulitzer Prize winning political cartoonist for the Buffalo News, Adam Zyglis. Originally published in 2016, Zyglis just reposted the cartoon in response to the armed protests in Michigan against Governor Whitmer's anti-pandemic policies.