October Surprise?

McConnell’s Court:  This week’s  Supreme Court decisions provide another reminder that regardless of how they are won, elections have consequences especially elections that result in the appointment of conservatives like Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, in a 5-4 decision with Gorsuch aligned with the conservative majority,  the court ruled in favor of the third iteration of Trump’s Muslim travel ban.  Essentially, the majority concluded that presidents need the power to protect the country from marauding hordes trying to do nefarious things, even if those marauding hordes are just benign tourists, businessmen, family members or students all who happen to be Muslims.  The majority noted Trump’s despicable anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric but decided that since his words weren’t reflected in the language of the executive order they weren’t all that relevant.  That said Justice Kennedy did manage to throw some shade Trump’s way, he isn’t all that happy with Trump’s language but isn’t distressed enough about it to jump ship from the conservative majority.  In a very biting dissent Justice Sotomayor pretty much slammed Trump as well as her conservative colleagues.  She cited Trump’s countless anti-Muslim statements and equated the court’s majority opinion with the controversial decision in the Korematsu case, the 1944 decision that concluded that the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II was both justifiable and constitutional.  Korematsu’s conviction was voided in 1983 after it was revealed that the government had knowingly misrepresented the threat that Japanese Americans provided to national security at the time of the war but the decision was never formally overturned, that is until yesterday.  In an unusual move that might have had as much to do with his desire to send a message to Trump that internment camps are a really bad thing especially when they are justified using falsified “facts,” as with his disapproval of Sotomayor invoking the case in the first place,  Chief Justice Roberts said that Korematsu was ”gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and-to be clear-has no place in law under the Constitution.”  The travel ban ruling was just one of the truly depressing and very conservative decisions announced by the court during the week.  The court also ruled against a California law that required anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to advise women about abortion options, concluding that requiring such clinics to tell women the truth was a violation of the centers’ First Amendment rights.  In other decisions the courts pretty much punted on a few gerrymandering cases and sent a case concerning whether or not a florist could refuse to create floral arrangements for a same sex wedding back to be reconsidered in light of their recent decision about the wedding cake baker.  Senator McConnell who has proudly said that the finest moment in his career so far is his decision to refuse to allow hearings for the confirmation of Merrick Garland, Obama’s moderate and qualified Supreme Court nominee, to proceed was positively gleeful about the outcome of all of these cases as was Trump who spent the day crowing about his travel ban success.  To celebrate, McConnell’s office tweeted out a picture of him reaching out to touch the hands of Justice Gorsuch, Sistine Chapel style. Trump will just spend the rest of the month, year and his life bragging about his success at banning Muslims from the US shores. The court isn’t done yet, one more notable decision is due shortly.  That decision concerns a union case, Janus v AFSCME, where the court is expected to decide whether or not public-sector unions can compel nonunion members to pay certain fees without violating their First Amendment rights.  Given this court’s conservative bent, the unions have every right to be nervous.  As to those internment camps, especially the pediatric ones, Melania Trump is planning another trip to the border since her last one was so well received. No news yet on what she plans to wear.  Despite the government’s assertions that they’ve made a lot of progress returning separated children to their parents, they haven’t so to the extent that Melania really wants to show some compassion there probably will be plenty of babies for her to touch or even faux hug.  But she’d better hurry, late last night just hours after Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told the Senate Finance Committee that parents would have to give up their asylum claims and agree to be deported if they want to see their kids anytime soon a really angry San Diego federal judge issued a preliminary injunction calling for all children affected by the zero-tolerance immigration policy to be reunited with their parents ASAP, if not sooner. The judge’s ruling requires that children under five be returned within 14 days and that children over 5 be returned within 30 days. The ruling also requires that children and parents be put in contact within 10 days.  For his part Jeff Sessions, who continues to believe that zero tolerance is the way to go actually joked about the separation of the kids from their parents by attacking the liberal elites and their friends in the press.  In a Los Angeles speech to a conservative criminal justice group he called those overwrought liberals the “lunatic fringe” and their concerns about the condition of the children exaggerated, hysterical and hypocritical, especially coming from people living in “gated communities.”   Trump may hate Sessions and love to make fun of his Mr. Magoo-like features  but if you close your eyes and ignore their regional accents you won’t be able to tell the two guys apart.  

Primary Tuesday:  While most open eyes in New York were focused on the Staten Island Republican primary between the Trump-like former Congressman and convicted felon Michael Grimm and the Trump-supported current Congressman Dan Donovan, the real action took place in Queens in Archie Bunker’s old neighborhood between Congressman Joe Crowley and a twenty-nine year old Bernie Sanders supported newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. While Donovan easily beat his Staten Island rival,  Crowley, the fourth ranking Democrat in the House who until last night was touted as a possible successor to Nancy Pelosi, lost big to Ocasio-Cortez.  Crowley, like Eric Cantor, the former number two in the Republican party who was earlier run out of Congress by a Tea party candidate, had grown complacent, although he spent a lot of money on his campaign he sent a surrogate to attend a debate in his place.  That, combined with the dramatic change in the ethnic make-up of his district, an area of New York where white working class voters have largely been replaced by a mix of Hispanics, Blacks and Asians, an anemic voter turnout and an enthusiastic campaign by Ocasio-Cortez, doomed his chances for reelection and his killed his ambition to someday become Speaker of the House.  We’re likely to hear a lot of political pundits say that Ocasio-Cortez’s victory represents a seismic shift in the Democratic party and it might but to a large extent it just represents a shift in the make-up of Queens. For his part Trump who hails from Queens was quick to tweet out his joy about Crowley’s defeat.  In South Carolina, Trump’s preferred candidate current Governor McMaster won a runoff and will move into the general election against Democratic State Representative James Smith.  Former Massachusetts Governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney easily won the Republican senatorial runoff in Utah, absent a political earthquake he will become Utah’s next Senator.  Romney promises that he will call Trump out whenever he thinks that he’s gone too far, whatever that means. Romney may be way more civil than Trump but at the end of the day they share a lot of policy views, after all Romney once promised that undocumented immigrants would “self deport” if he ever became president, so his assurances aren’t worth all that much.

Mueller Moments:  Even though he earlier expressed sympathy for Paul Manafort’s plight, T.S. Ellis, the federal judge presiding over Manafort’s Virginia fraud case rejected Manafort’s lawyer’s assertion that Special Counsel Mueller had overstepped his boundaries by going after Manafort for actions unrelated to Trump’s campaign.  Though he continues to believe that Mueller is being deployed as a “political weapon” against Trump, Judge Ellis ruled that "No interpretive gymnastics are necessary to determine that the investigation at issue here falls within" his authority.  As to the rest of the Mueller investigation, Bloomberg News reports that Mueller and his team are accelerating their efforts, closing in on completing their investigation into Trump obstruction and moving to establishing a case for collusion with Russia.  Bloomberg  expects that the collusion case and any related indictments will be completed by the fall, as in right around the time of the midterms.   Similarly Vanity Fair is predicting an October surprise.  As to NYC’s former Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who recently pledged to contribute $80 million to Democratic candidates running in the 2018 midterms,  reports are that the 76 year old real billionaire is once again considering a run for the presidency, this time as a Democrat.  For his part Trump continues to disrupt the status quo, having achieved peace with North Korea, he plans to sit down with Vladimir Putin soon, probably in Helsinki.  Depending on his mood and how much he wants to make his good friend Vlad happy, European allies and some aides are very concerned that Trump might give away something small like the country of Estonia.  As to peace with North Korea, things are moving really well on that front, particularly if you don’t mind that, surprise, surprise, Kim Jung Un is rapidly upgrading the nuclear reactor that his regime uses to make atomic bombs.