Here are this week’s SWAJ Research Links, compiled by SWAJ Team Member Mark Kurth.
National Inquiries
The Supreme Court Sure Picked a Curious Moment to Embrace Humility
Call it judicial cowardice or call it long-lost judicial humility, but the consensus view among the justices was that a lack of uniformity, coherence, and certainty—as well the fear of vexatious acts and petty mischief— precluded the court from allowing the words of the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 to mean what they say. Historians have fallen over themselves to show that, yes, Section 3 bars insurrectionists from the White House, up to and including Trump. Yet the justices seemed terrified that disqualifying him from the ballot could unleash chaos in future elections.
Explaining Ron DeSantis’ effort to call a convention of states, amend US Constitution
In a Jan. 29 news conference, DeSantis said he would ask the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to pass four resolutions that would compel Congress to call a "convention of the states" aimed at passing those same resolutions as constitutional amendments.
"Washington’s never going to reform itself," DeSantis said in the conference. "It’s going to require us working in our individual states using the tools that the Founding Fathers gave us to be able to take power away from D.C. and return it back to the American people."
Moms for Liberty Completely Collapses in Former Strongholds
Two different chapters of Moms for Liberty faced stinging losses this week in two strongholds, the latest events in the once powerful organization’s steady decline.
Moms for Liberty experienced a meteoric rise at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as local chapters sprang up to push back against coronavirus restrictions in schools. The organization soon expanded to pushing book bans and opposing discussion of LGBTQ issues and race and diversity in classrooms, prompting the Southern Poverty Law Center to categorize Moms for Liberty as an extremist hate group.
‘It’s devastating’: Trump seizes unmatched control over GOP
“He’s got a stronghold,” said Amy Tarkanian, a former chair of the Nevada Republican Party. “It’s not just on the Republican base, but also in the House. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s completely mind-boggling to me, the type of brainwashing that has been done.”
In Nevada, his allies urged Republicans to select “none of these candidates” over Nikki Haley in Tuesday’s primary, resulting in a lopsided defeat that, while purely symbolic, was designed to shame her for deigning to even challenge him. Trump swept the state’s caucus on Thursday, continuing his march to the GOP’s nominating convention in Milwaukee.
Donald Trump threatens NATO, says he would 'encourage' Russia to 'do whatever the hell they want'
Trump, during a campaign rally in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday said his decision, if he's elected again, would be based on whether NATO members are contributing enough to the foundational alliance. The former president said he made that very point during an international meeting that took place during his presidency.
“One of the presidents of a big country stood up and said, ‘Well sir, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you."
Trump asks Supreme Court to block ruling he lacks immunity in January 6 criminal case
Trump asked the Supreme Court to temporarily block a scathing and unanimous decision from the DC Circuit handed down last week that flatly rejected his claims of immunity from election subversion charges brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
“Conducting a months-long criminal trial of President Trump at the height of election season will radically disrupt President Trump’s ability to campaign against President Biden,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in their request.
Trump’s new Supreme Court gambit doesn’t even try to hide that it’s a delaying tactic
The ex-president asked the Supreme Court on Monday to step in to temporarily block a US Court of Appeals decision that last week eviscerated his claims that a president is effectively above the law while in office and shielded from prosecution afterwards.
The filing is Trumpian in its audacity.
In essence, it argues that it would be unfair to millions of voters if the ex-President cannot get his message out in the 2024 election because he is on trial over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The former president was less concerned about the rights of voters when he sought to thwart their choice to eject him from office in 2020. After an unprecedented effort by Trump to interrupt the cherished tradition of peaceful transfers of power three years ago, Trump’s attorneys nevertheless insist the real “stunning breach of precedent and historical norms” is that the lower court ruled that presidential immunity for official acts does not exist at all. While Trump argues he was using presidential power in a legitimate effort to bring to light electoral fraud, there is nothing in the Constitution that gives the president the right or duty to officially administer elections, count votes or contact local election officials as the ex-president is alleged to have done.
Republicans’ topsy-turvy take on aid for Ukraine reveals party in thrall to Trump
In a pre-dawn vote on Tuesday, Graham joined the majority of Senate Republicans in opposing a foreign aid package that would rush wartime assistance to Ukraine as it approaches the second anniversary of Russia’s full invasion.
It was a shocking – if not entirely surprising – turn for one of the chamber’s leading defense hawks and a steadfast Russia critic. But these days Graham has another distinction: he is one of Donald Trump’s most loyal allies on Capitol Hill, where the former president – and likely Republican nominee – has been whipping up opposition to Ukraine’s war effort.
Just 22 Republican senators broke with Trump to approve the aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other US allies – yet another sign of how thoroughly the former president’s America First vision has supplanted the party’s consensus toward internationalism and interventionism.
Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely calls church shooter “a trans from El Salvador”
After a shooter opened fire with an AR-15 in a Texas megachurch on Sunday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) took to social media to make the story entirely about the shooter’s identity.
She got that identity wrong.
“Not only was the shooter a trans from El Salvador,” Greene posted on X, “she also had a gun engraved with ‘Free Palestine’ but investigators can’t say if she was politically motivated or not.”
Most Taylor Swift conspiracy theorists are also election deniers, poll finds
Americans who believe the conspiracy theory that Taylor Swift is part of an elaborate scheme to help Democrats win the November election are also more likely to not believe the 2020 election results, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
Almost three-quarters of those who believe the Swift conspiracy also believe the 2020 election outcome was fraudulent, according to the Monmouth University Poll.
Republicans admit it. Kevin McCarthy has never looked so good.
Interviews with multiple Republicans over the last few days across multiple House factions — people who consider themselves on Johnson’s team, as well as those who were never enthusiastic about his rise — describe a speaker who seems to be winging it on major questions of strategy, messaging and basic vote-counting.
Dismay over Johnson’s seemingly limp grasp on the speaker’s gavel has even produced a new trend of sorts: McCarthy nostalgia.
“Kevin would have a strategy, he’d shop it around, then he’d make a play call,” a senior Republican lawmaker said. “The more I’m around Johnson, the more it’s clear to me he doesn’t have a plan.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson not rushing to address foreign aid request while others weigh rewriting Senate-passed plan
Johnson told his members at a closed-door meeting Wednesday that there’s “no rush” in deciding how to handle foreign aid, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, and did not tip his hand on how he plans to proceed other than making clear he would not put the Senate package on the House floor in its current form.
Some rank-and-file members are drawing up their own proposals.
States Fights
‘Fleeing under the cover of darkness’: How Idaho’s abortion ban is changing pregnancy in the state
The lawsuit from Jen Adkins, Lyons and other patients and their doctors, which was filed by the advocacy organization the Center for Reproductive Rights, seeks clarity on the medical exceptions in Idaho’s abortion bans. Lyons’ employer, St. Luke’s health system, is not a party to the suit.
A spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador said in a statement to CNN, “consistent with Idaho’s high regard for human life, the Defense of Life Act safeguards the life of pregnant women.”
The statement disputed claims that doctors are leaving the state because of the law.
“There is no evidence that there are fewer doctors in Idaho today than before these laws were put in place,” the statement said. “Our healthcare system is stronger and better serves women and children when our doctors prioritize saving two lives rather than prioritizing abortion on demand.”
‘A Palpable Fear of Even Letting Your Friends Know You Are a Democrat’
As a group, we are vilified. There’s a vocal part of the other political parties that makes up lies and says things about the Democratic Party to demonize us. There are Democrats who demonize other political parties, too. All of that tension leaves a bad taste in other people’s mouths. Most of us in Wyoming — people who are reasonable and love their state and their community — aren’t interested in just butting heads and this adversarial hatemongering. Nobody likes this angry style of dehumanizing communication.
Kansas AG says schools must out trans kids to their parents — even without a law requiring it
Kansas’s far-right Republican attorney general, Kris Kobach, has ordered school districts to out transgender, nonbinary, and gender-nonconforming students to their parents, saying that failing to do so is a violation of parental rights.
Kobach is making the move even though Kansas does not have a law requiring this disclosure.
He had written letters last year to six districts that he says allowed students to transition socially without notifying their parents. Two of the districts immediately changed their policies, but four have not, he announced Thursday. The four are Kansas City, Shawnee Mission, Olathe, and Topeka.
A longtime NY Democrat flipped a Republican seat. The nation took notice.
Suozzi’s 8-point victory Tuesday against Republican candidate Mazi Pilip came as Democrats nationwide are grappling with the GOP’s leveraging of the southern border crisis to its advantage, Biden’s low approval ratings and concerns about his age.
But Suozzi managed to neutralize these political weaknesses that his Democratic brethren will likely confront as they run for House seats in swing districts throughout the country in November.