Crooked Media - What A Day: Toeing the potty line

The day most of us thought would never come is? finally? here? 
 

• Disgraced/arrested former president Donald Trump appeared in a Miami courtroom on Tuesday to face 37 criminal counts related to stealing classified documents when he left the White House and lying to federal officials when they tried to recover them. Trump pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. A few hundred protestors, most of them Trump supporters, flanked the courthouse. Trump was processed by the U.S. Marshals, booked, and fingerprinted. We love to see it, don’t we folks?
   

• U.S. magistrate judge Jonathan Goodman instructed the former president not to speak to witnesses, or his co-defendant Walt Nauta as the case unfolds. Good luck with that, my guy! Or at least be ready to hold this asshole in contempt. Nauta is currently employed as one of Trump’s aides, and also appeared in court today, but did not enter a plea because he doesn’t have a local lawyer. Trump-appointed judge Aileen Cannon has not recused herself from presiding over the case (a shock to us all!) and has given no indication that she will. Media organizations filed a request on Monday for same-day audio of the proceedings, but it was denied.  
   

• Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the documents investigation, attended the arraignment today after announcing the indictment last week. The Justice Department recommended that Trump and Nauta be released with no financial or special conditions as “the government does not view either defendant as a flight risk.” Trump sat silently with his arms crossed during the 47 minute hearing, probably daydreaming about flying to the Cayman Islands to be with his money.

If well-meaning, reasonable people thought maybe this would be the moment that the Republican Party would finally sever ties with Trump, they were sorely mistaken. 
 

• Elected Republicans are going absolutely berserk defending Trump, the first and only American president to ever be indicted on federal charges. Faux-populist grifter/Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) announced that he will place a procedural hold on all DOJ nominees in retaliation, accusing Merrick Garland of using his office to “harass his political opponents.” The entire House GOP leadership team continues to wage a bizarre, nonsensical defense of Trump, including of his apparent proclivity for storing stolen classified documents in a lavatory, and pound the drum that the federal government is being “weaponized” against him.  

• GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has demanded that his fellow Republican hopefuls commit to pardoning Trump should they win in 2024, and Trump’s former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley signaled that she would be inclined to do so. A real race-to-the-bottom to be the running mate of the guy who violated the Espionage Act! Despite (or perhaps because of?) his federal indictment, Trump holds a staggering 40-point lead in the 2024 Republican primary polls over the current second-place candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). 

Legal experts estimate that more than a year could pass before Trump stands trial. And that’s if we assume Cannon doesn’t try to run out the clock for him. That’s to say nothing about the ongoing investigations into Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election or the decades of fraudulent financial practices at his businesses. Our long national nightmare is far from over, but the fun parts are just beginning.

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In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision, which ended the right to abortion at the federal level, anti-choice groups and right-wing lawmakers have been less successful than they envisioned in stripping abortion rights from state constitutions, or preventing the addition of abortion protections to those constitutions through ballot initiatives. When abortion has been put on the ballot, even in red states, voters (as polling has long suggested they would) chose to protect reproductive rights. So Republican lawmakers—out and proud enemies of democracy—are pursuing new ways to kill ballot initiatives, at least as they relate to abortion. In Ohio, a GOP-sponsored measure known as State Issue 1 would raise the threshold required to amend the state’s constitution through a ballot initiative from its current simple-majority requirement to 60 percent, and would impose stricter limitations on how signatures can be gathered for such campaigns. When we say the GOP’s only path to survival is cheating, we mean it. A nonpartisan coalition called One Person One Vote filed a lawsuit last month arguing that the ballot language for State Issue 1 was misleading, and that it does not enumerate the law as it currently stands, nor does it accurately reflect the severity of the proposed changes. On Monday, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed with One Person One Vote and ordered the Ohio Ballot Board to correct the language. The special election to consider State Issue 1 will be held on August 8.

The Department of Education announced that the Biden Administration will resume interest accrual on federal student loans on September 1, and monthly payments will be due starting in October. 

Two active-duty Marines who stormed the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection pleaded guilty on Monday to their involvement, joining one of their colleagues who admitted to his participation last month. 

The “No Labels” party announced that it will likely exit the race entirely if Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL)—who is running to Donald Trump’s right—emerges as the 2024 GOP nominee. Hmm it seems like every individual and group that purports to be “neither left nor right” is, in fact, the latter!

A mass shooting in Denver, CO, wounded nine people on Tuesday night in an area where fans were celebrating the Denver Nuggets winning their first NBA Final.

The Consumer Price Index report for May showed the smallest annual increase in inflation in over two years, but we still have a ways to go. 

The federal Office of the Special Counsel determined that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre violated the Hatch Act—the law barring federal government officials from influencing elections on the job—when she used the phrase “mega MAGA Republican officials,” during a press briefing. Lol, okay. 

Author Cormac McCarthy, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Road, has died at 89.

In the village of Neskuchne, Ukraine, Russian soldiers lay dead in the street under a Ukrainian flag, the first independently-confirmed report of Ukraine’s most significant advances against Russia in seven months. Reuters reported at least three deceased Russian soldiers, including one whose body lay in an abandoned Russian military vehicle. The Kremlin has not acknowledged any Ukrainian gains, and on Tuesday Russian President Vladimir Putin said he sees no need for a new mobilization initiative to combat the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Putin also repeated his threat to withdraw Russia from the Black Sea grain deal meant to ease the global food crisis further strained by the war. The deal will expire on July 17 unless Russia agrees to extend it. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with President Biden on Tuesday and stated that the alliance’s unwavering support to Ukraine is making a measurable difference on the battlefield.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans has allowed the Affordable Care Act’s preventive-care mandate to remain in effect pending yet more bad-faith, right-wing litigation. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the United Federation of Teachers have struck a tentative five-year agreement that significantly increases starting salaries for new teachers and expands remote learning. 

A federal judge ruled that New York columnist E. Jean Carroll can amend her original defamation lawsuit against disgraced former president Donald Trump to include comments he made at a CNN town hall after a jury found in Carroll’s favor last month. 

Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) have introduced what they call “The Moneyball Act” which would require the owners of any professional baseball team that relocates more than 25 miles away to compensate its former community, or face the threat of terminating Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption. Somewhere Bernie Sanders is whispering into Barabara Lee’s ear saying, “Tell them we want back pay for the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn.”

Bernie Sanders has vowed to block President Biden’s nominee to head the National Institutes of Health, and any other nominee that might come before his Senate Health Committee, until the White House provides him with a “comprehensive” plan to lower drug prices.