Are Horse Heads Still a Thing?  🌻 🌻 🌻

State of Play: On Friday, targeting everyone associated with his January 6 prosecution, Trump threat posted “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Special Counsel Jack Smith’s rapid response team quickly requested that January 6 case Judge Tanya Chutkan issue a protective order preventing Trump from sharing case evidence over concerns that his not so veiled threat was intended to intimidate and endanger witnesses, people like former VP Pence and maybe even Mark Meadows who many believe, or hope,  will also testify against Trump.  On Saturday Judge Chutkan gave Trump’s legal team until 5 pm on Monday (today) to respond to Special Jack’s protective order request.  Given that delay is a major part of their strategy, Trump’s legal team countered that since expecting them to work over the weekend was unfair, they couldn’t possibly meet that timeline.  Special Jack parried back that in the time it took to complain about the Monday deadline, they could have instead prepared a response to his protective order request.  Agreeing with Crackerjack Jack, Judge Chutkan then responded that she was sticking with the Monday deadline. Then Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro who’d complained about weekend work pulled a Rudy Giuliani by appearing on five Sunday news shows where he previewed  Trump’s defense which essentially is that Trump’s scheme to toss the results of the 2020 election was no more than  a technical  infraction of the Constitution and anyway Trump is special so he gets to say and do whatever he wants even if his “constitutionally protected” words involve engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow the government and anyway violating the Constitution, even if your violation is deemed bigly is okay, well okay for Trump. Worth pointing out, Special Jack’s indictment doesn’t question Trump’s right to lie out loud about the election results, rather he’s going after Trump’s coup conspiring and his efforts to illegally toss out legitimate election results. Trump spent the rest of the weekend sh-t posting, attacking unfit, biased Obama Judge Chutkan, “deranged” Special Jack, all of those Communist Democrats out to get him and anyone who supports him, filthy, gone to pot post-Trump Washington DC, “crooked” Joe Biden and for good measure the “woke equals failure,” US Women’s Soccer Team who obviously lost their match because of “crooked” Joe Biden and due to their overt hostility to the USA.  Worth noting, though he experienced a few points of slippage in the polls, Trump still leads in his party’s polls and worse yet, is neck and neck with Biden.

Judicial Shenanigans: Trump wants Judge Chutkan who the Senate confirmed 95 to 0 replaced because she’s Jamaican born, an “Obama” judge and is obviously out to get him but he remains all in on Judge “loose” Cannon and Ginni’s husband Clarence.  Over the weekend we learned that Judge Cannon whose criminal case experience can be counted on one hand, committed, and then doubled down on two reversible errors on one of those cases. Maybe that can be blamed on a combination of hubris and inexperience but there’s no excuse for Justice Clarence Thomas’ grifting.  When he’s not jetting off on luxury yacht vacations with right-wing billionaires Thomas likes to tool around the country in his RV to rub elbows with commoners.  It turns out that there’s an unethical backstory to all that RVing.  The NY Times reports that his tricked- out luxury vehicle cost $267,000 and that the heavily in debt Thomas bought it with the help of still another wealthy friend, former United Health Care executive Anthony Welters, who loaned him the money, funds that were probably mostly, if not entirely, forgiven. Of course, if Justice Samuel Alito is right, Thomas has nothing to worry about.  Alito’s questionable position is that the Constitution prohibits Congress from imposing ethics rules on SCOTUS Justices but then again, he probably has nothing to worry about because this Congress won’t even try.    

The Buckeye State:  Keep an eye on Ohio where a special election is taking place this week. Ohio’s Republican controlled legislature is so concerned that voters will cast their ballots for enshrining abortion rights into the state constitution in November that they’ve squeezed in a special August referendum to vote on raising the threshold for amendments from 50% to 60%.  They’re doing that over fears that the popular pro-choice amendment, currently polling at 59%, will likely pass in November.  The Republicans, who previously had ruled out future August elections because of low voter turnout, were hoping that low voter turnout which generally benefits Republicans would make it easy to get their 60% threshold referendum passed.  Of course, they failed to anticipate the outrage that their move would provoke.  Early voter turnout has been extremely high. We’ll know after the polls close on Tuesday whether it’s been high enough and whether Democrats, suburban women, their male allies, and anyone else who cares about reproductive rights are still motivated by the issue. And keep an eye on Fulton County where Fani Willis’s imminent indictments are expected to really be imminent.