Happy New Year ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻 🥂🥂🥂 

Bye Bye 2023:  Trump who has been known to complain about how Christmas is being ruined by those who say Happy Holiday rather than Merry Christmas did manage to include the merry part in his annual holiday message but the rest of his totally in character holiday post hardly reflected the holiday spirit, especially the part where he attacked the current leaders of the country as THUGS while wishing that THEY ROT IN HELL. It’s fair to assume that his new year’s message will be no better.  The endgame of 2023 is here, and it looks increasingly likely that despite all, the courts aren’t going to save us from Trump.  SCOTUS has rebuffed Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to leapfrog consideration of Trump’s presidential immunity and double indemnity claims over the Appeals court.  As a result, there is virtually no chance that the election obstruction case will begin in March as even an expedited appeals process takes time.  Just about everyone expects that Trump’s double indemnity claim will get immediately tossed, with the courts focusing on his immunity defense. Though most legal pundits think that won’t hold water either and that Trump’s argument that he was allowed to interfere in state elections and engage in insurrection because both acts were in the scope of his role as president shouldn’t fly, we will only know for sure once the SCOTUS that he stacked weighs in. As to those hopes that as an insurrectionist, and Trump pretty much keeps admitting that he is one, Trump can be kept off the ballot, that’s a stretch too.  The Colorado Republican Party has asked SCOTUS to overrule Colorado’s decision to disqualify Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican primary ballot and Trump’s lawyers are expected to follow suit shortly. Moreover, Michigan’s top court just ruled that Trump can’t be kept off their state’s primary ballot.  They didn’t weigh in on whether or not Trump is an insurrectionist, but instead concluded that Michigan’s law doesn’t prohibit insurrectionists from running in primaries. The Fulton County case is on the slow track, not expected to come to a trial until late summer and forget about the Mar a Lago case presided over by Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon.  That case is supposed to be a slam dunk for prosecutors but given that Cannon is doing all she can to impede it, it’s probably not going to make it to trial until after the election or never. Despite all the delays, Jack Smith’s team which deserves credit for working through the holidays is still preparing for trial. Yesterday they asked election obstruction case Judge Tanya Chutkan to prohibit Trump’s legal team from introducing “irrelevant disinformation,” like the claims that Trump pushes in his campaign stump speeches including the one about President Biden coordinating with the Justice Department to persecute him into the court. Naturally, Trump’s response is that Smith’s teams filing is illegal and unconstitutional. For good measure he also called Smith out as Biden’s errand boy. Some things never change and Trump who talks like Hitler but claims he knows little about him is one of them. Also not changing is Putin.  He’s moved his chief adversary, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, to a prison in Siberia and has officially pronounced that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

House Politics:  The House is away on holiday break but that’s not stopping Republican leadership from gearing up to advance their impeachment inquiry into all things Biden come January.  Maybe, if we’re really lucky, they’ll do something productive like pass a budget, push the next government closing deadline out a few months and/or pass a funding package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan but given their incompetence, don’t count on it.  Given the Senate map Democrats will have a really hard time holding on to control of the Senate but there’s a good chance that despite Biden’s popularity problems, Hakeem Jeffries and his blue team will take back the House not because the Republican contingent has been so incompetent but because redistricting battles seem to be benefitting Democrats this cycle.  New York is in the midst of a redistricting which is expected to lead to more blue NY seats and now it appears that Wisconsin is following suit.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the states’ heavily gerrymandered legislative maps were unconstitutional, ordering new maps be adopted before the 2024 election.  In Wisconsin where statewide elections are typically very close, the Governor is a Democrat as is one of the state’s Senators,  Republicans hold a 64-35 majority in the state Assembly and a 22-11 supermajority in the state Senate.  Currently 6 of the state’s 8 Congressional representatives are Republicans. Republicans are appealing the state court decision but if the decision holds up it’s fair to assume that some of those red seats will turn blue.  Congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s seat may stay in Republican hands but only because she’s shifting districts. Seeing the writing on the wall, Boebert, known mostly for her antics, public PDA and gun affinity is leaving the Trump plus 8 district that she almost lost in 2022 to run for the much safer Trump plus 20 seat being vacated by retiring Republican Ken Buck. Quite a few other Republicans are running for the Buck seat so Boebert’s decision to shift districts to avoid what was looking to be a losing battle against Democrat Adam Frisch in her old district is far from a sure thing for her though it may be a win for Republicans who now stand a greater chance of holding on to her old district with a different candidate.

Presidential Politics:  Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaire, who has been self-funding his campaign has decided to stop running most of this TV ads purportedly because TV’s not a good medium for him but really because he’s growing tired of burning cash for what is increasingly looking like a losing run, or at least a losing run for the presidency.  Nikki Haley continues to get lots of attention largely because polls indicate that she is only trailing Trump by 4 points in New Hampshire where independents can vote in the Republican primary. Yesterday Haley refused to acknowledge that the Civil War had something to do with slavery which might be because having locked up a lot of those NH independents she’s now trying to get more from the right into her camp and talking about slavery being a bad thing might be a step too far for that crowd?  Ron DeSantis, who is no longer viewed as the one to save the Republican party from Trump largely because the MAGA party doesn’t appear to want to be saved and because he’s just Trump with no personality, remains ahead of Haley in Iowa but even more behind Trump.  Absent anything catastrophic, Trump, who has taken to standing on toe pads during his rally speeches, is likely to sew up the Republican nomination on March 5th Super Tuesday.  As to those toe pads, take a look at some pictures to check them out, they are really odd. It's not clear whether they are to counteract the forward leaning tilt that results from the heel lifts that Trump wears to make him appear taller or whether he has another serious balance problem, but you can only imagine what Fox would say if Biden was using toe pads.  As to Biden, who has his hands full these days running the country and getting the media to acknowledge the improving economy while dealing with wars in Gaza and Ukraine, he’s got his team off in Mexico trying to halt the next bigly wave of migrants expected to arrive at the border shortly. 

Fog of War:  Hamas leadership has rejected participating in an ceasefire proposed by Egypt maybe because though their people are suffering, and they are suffering, Hamas appears to be doing well in the court of public opinion helped by the NY Times who recently published a “guest essay” from the Hamas appointed Mayor of Gaza who lamented in his essay about the destruction of his city but failed to mention the precipitating October 7 attack on Israel, the 1200 Israel residents killed that day, the women raped or the hostages still in Hamas hands. #BringThemAllHomeAliveNow. WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich too.

Wishing a Happy and Healthy New Year to all 🥂 🥂 🥂