Crooked Media - Gloom for debate

Democrats are freaking out about President Biden’s dismal debate performance Thursday night because, well, yikes. Talk is swirling about whether he should stay in the race.  

• President Biden scheduled the earliest presidential debate in U.S. history in an attempt to shake up the campaign and quiet doubts about his age. But his meandering responses, uncertain appearance, bouts of incoherence and raspy voice (he apparently had a cold) only enflamed concerns. Trump told outrageous lies all night that the moderators didn’t fact-check (as they said they wouldn’t), and Biden struggled to refute his nonsense. When the spectacle finally ended, even longtime Biden supporters began openly talking about replacing him. Actually doing so is very tricky, though, for several reasons. 

• There are basically two ways for Biden to depart: willingly, or unwillingly. The first is far simpler, technically speaking. Should he withdraw from the race, the delegates Biden won in the primaries, who have pledged to support him, would be free to vote for whomever they choose. Speculation is now mounting about who might try to pressure Biden to make that difficult decision. 

• The second possibility would be to force Biden out against his will. But the rules make that next to impossible. A majority of delegates would need to be convinced to revolt against him — which, while possible in theory, is extremely unlikely, in part because these delegates are chosen by the Biden campaign. They’d have to be persuaded to break their pledge. “Someone would have to make an argument that this would be terrible, it’s the wrong thing to do, he’s too old, whatever,” Elaine Kamarck, an expert on political primaries who has also served as a Democratic delegate multiple times, told the Washington Post. “Which frankly is why no one would probably do it. It would be extremely destructive. You’d have to take him head on.”

No one knows what might happen next — but pressure is building. 

• “Obviously that debate was a fucking disaster,” noted Jon Favreau, co-host of Pod Save America, which released a debate episode Friday morning. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is reportedly a personal friend of Biden’s, wrote that the debate made him “weep… Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.” One House Democrat told Axios that early on in the debate, their colleagues started sending around that famous clip from the movie “Airplane”: “I Picked the Wrong Week to Stop Sniffing Glue.” The Times editorial board called for Biden to leave the race. 

• Even former President Barack Obama, Biden’s best surrogate, said Biden underwhelmed. “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” the former president wrote on Twitter/X, referencing his first disappointing matchup with Mitt Romney in 2012. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”

• Biden held a rally in North Carolina on Friday, in which his voice seemed much stronger, and acknowledged all the bad reviews. “I know I’m not a young man,” Biden said. “I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth…. I know how to do this job….I know, like millions of Americans know; when you get knocked down you get back up!” The crowd roared.

Biden has so far given no sign he’ll consider calls to withdraw from the race. “Of course he’s not dropping out,” a campaign spokesperson said Friday.  Well, okay then. 

The Supreme Court handed a series of victories to conservatives on Friday morning, including one decision that overturned 40 years of regulatory precedent in a heavy blow to what many conservatives call the “administrative state.”

The court struck down a principle known as “Chevron deference,” which held that courts should defer to federal agencies when it comes to interpreting laws. The rule had empowered agencies to craft thousands of regulations over four decades on the environment, labor, health policy and much more. 

Mark Joseph Stern, a senior writer at Slate, wrote that the ruling “constitutes a major transfer of power from the executive branch to the judiciary, stripping federal agencies of significant discretion to interpret and enforce ambiguous regulations.”

The court’s three liberal-leaning justices all dissented. Justice Elena Kagan spared no words in her scathing dissent, writing that “in one fell swoop, the majority today gives itself exclusive power over every open issue — no matter how expertise-driven or policy-laden — involving the meaning of regulatory law … The majority turns itself into the country’s administrative czar.”

The implications of this ruling could be seismic, and play out over decades to come. 

The Supreme Court also ruled 6-3 to narrow the federal obstruction statute used to charge about 350 Capitol riot defendants and Trump, saying prosecutors must specifically prove defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents. It’s not clear how the ruling will directly impact Trump, however. Special Counsel Jack Smith has said that it won’t. But Trump will presumably try to use this decision to his advantage. 

The Supreme Court is set to release its decision on Trump’s claims of presidential immunity on Monday, the final day of this year’s term.  Oh good! The season finale of rolling back our rights! 

The Supreme Court rejected Steve Bannon’s last-minute appeal to postpone his 4-month prison sentence for defying subpoenas from the House Select Committee investigating the Capitol riot. Bannon will report to prison on Monday.

Republicans wasted no time seizing on Biden’s debate performance, and said Cabinet members should consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Biden from office. “There’s a lot of people asking about invoking the 25th Amendment right now,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters Friday morning. “This is an alarming situation.”

Prosecutors rested their case in Senator Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) corruption trial after seven weeks. 

Iowa’s top court allowed the state to begin enforcing a ban on almost all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy — technically, once any fetal cardiac activity is detected. Doctors say this is often before women even know they’re pregnant.  Effectively, this amounts to a total ban.

The Vatican will run entirely on solar power thanks to a new solar plant, the Pope announced. “It is necessary to transition to a sustainable development model that reduces greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, aiming for climate neutrality,” Pope Francis said in a letter announcing the clean power initiative.

Brazil’s Supreme Court decriminalized possession of marijuana for personal use on Tuesday. The high court first started deliberating in 2015 and is one of the last Latin American countries to decriminalize marijuana, according to NBC News.