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The superseding indictment is a BFD, but the one to come is an even bigger deal. The Grand Jury usually doesn’t meet again until Tuesday but we shall see.
Charles P Pierce/Esquire:
The Trump Indictments Look More Gravely Serious Than I Anticipated
Don’t play chess with Jack Smith under any circumstances—he’s 10 moves ahead.
Trump Employee No. 4 is going to be a helluva witness, I’m thinking. And he’s at least half-a-hero.
Consider how Smith has played this. First of all, he runs a grand jury in Florida on the Pool Shed Papers completely on the down low while the rest of us were wondering what he was up to in Washington. Then, on the day he has the Trump legal team in Washington in for a chat, his Florida grand jury drops the mother of all superseding indictments. Next he will saw Rudy Giuliani in half and make the 15th at Bedminster disappear.
I no longer have any doubt that the indictments coming out of Washington are going to be more gravely serious even than I had anticipated. After all, I’m the guy who didn’t think the whole Pool Shed Papers thing ever would amount to much of anything. I was guessing with Jack Smith, who already was 10 moves ahead of where I thought I was and vanishing over a suddenly brighter horizon.
Charlie Sykes/Bulwark:
Some quick takeaways:
The new indictments give us a dramatic glimpse into Jack Smith’s modus operandi. He intends to keep going, and he’s prepared to escalate even after the original indictments are issued. Keep that in mind when he drops the J6 indictments.
The original MAL doc case was already strong. Yesterday’s new charges make it even stronger. “I think this original indictment was engineered to last a thousand years and now this superseding indictment will last an antiquity (sic),” former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb told the Guardian. “This is such a tight case, the evidence is so overwhelming.”
The new indictments shred two of Trump’s most prominent defenses: (1) that he had willingly shared surveillance footage, and (2) that he was just blustering when he said he had the actual Iran plans.
Trump’s attempted coverup will take center stage at any trial.
Aaron Blake/Washington Post:
3 things we learned from new charges against Trump in documents case
Here are some takeaways.
1. The growing picture of a coverup
It’s been apparent for a long time that this case wasn’t just about Trump possessing classified documents when he shouldn’t; it was about allegedly failing to return them when legally required to and, importantly, obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
The superseding indictment drives home how much this trial will be about the alleged coverup.
The most vivid new scene in the indictment adds to what would seem to be a wealth of evidence of alleged obstruction of justice.
Axios:
Biden to run against MAGA in 2024, not just Trump
President Biden’s team is expanding his re-election strategy beyond Donald Trump to target the MAGA movement and its impact on U.S. politics, figuring it will endure even if Trump isn’t the GOP nominee, Axios has learned.
Why it matters: The move aims to cast Trumpism as a far-right authoritarian force — and stems partly from Democrats’ polling that suggests the term “MAGA” is viewed more negatively than “Trump Republicans.”
Biden’s team believes Trumpism will continue to permeate through the GOP at least through 2024, regardless of who emerges as the party’s presidential choice.
Trump has a big lead in GOP polls, but it’s unclear how his growing legal troubles will weigh on his campaign.The big picture: By attacking the “Make America Great Again” movement that some Americans see as particularly coarse and divisive, Biden’s team will seek to paint many Republicans across the ballot as MAGA candidates.
Jamelle Bouie/New York Times:
Ron DeSantis and the State Where History Goes to Die
DeSantis defended the curriculum language, telling reporters that teachers are “probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” In a statement, two members of Florida’s African American history standards work group defended the language in question, citing 16 individuals who, they say, developed valuable skills while in bondage.
Unfortunately for the Florida Department of Education, several of the people cited weren’t ever enslaved, and there’s little evidence that those who were learned any relevant skills for their “personal benefit” in slavery.
Noah Berlatsky/”Public Notice” on Substack:
Republicans like the hate DeSantis is selling. They just don’t like him.
He’s not tanking because of his extremism. On the contrary.
It’s tempting to believe that the embarrassing failures of DeSantis’s campaign are the natural backlash to his bigotry, cruelty, and authoritarianism. Or, as one characteristic recent article put it, “Being an Unlikable Jerk Not Working Out So Well for Ron DeSantis.” Book banning, human trafficking, slavery apology, Nazi memes: maybe DeSantis is too much of a fascist scumbag for even the GOP.
The truth though is less encouraging. DeSantis’s struggles have less to do with the hate and authoritarianism than with the fact that he’s running against the equally odious but inexplicably beloved Donald Trump. In fact, with Trump still firmly ensconced at the top of the field, it seems clear that “fascist scumbag” is the GOP’s preferred brand.
Yeah, but only by 52%. So there’s that.
And now for something completely different.
Ed Yong/The Atlantic:
Fatigue Can Shatter a Person
Everyday tiredness is nothing like the depleting symptom that people with long COVID and ME/CFS experience.
Fatigue is among the most common and most disabling of long COVID’s symptoms, and a signature of similar chronic illnesses such as myalgic encephalomyelitis (also known as chronic fatigue syndrome or ME/CFS). But in these diseases, fatigue is so distinct from everyday weariness that most of the people I have talked with were unprepared for how severe, multifaceted, and persistent it can be.
For a start, this fatigue isn’t really a single symptom; it has many faces. It can weigh the body down: Lisa Geiszler likens it to “wearing a lead exoskeleton on a planet with extremely high gravity, while being riddled with severe arthritis.” It can rev the body up: Many fatigued people feel “wired and tired,” paradoxically in fight-or-flight mode despite being utterly depleted. It can be cognitive: Thoughts become sluggish, incoherent, and sometimes painful—like “there’s steel wool stuck in my frontal lobe,” Gwynn Dujardin, a literary historian with ME, told me.
Washington Post:
Democrats plot middle-class message to retake economic high ground
Many in the party are alarmed at polling showing that most voters trust Republicans more than Biden and the Democrats on the economy
The secret slide deck started circulating in June, intended as a wake-up call to top Democrats in Congress, the White House and state capitals across the country about a dangerous flaw in the Democratic brand.
Based on six months of polling and focus groups, the document showed the party losing badly to Republicans on the most important single issue of voters: the economy. Voters said Democrats focused too much on “cultural and social issues” and not enough on pocketbook issues. The message of “economic fairness” was a loser compared with “growing the economy,” a regular GOP refrain.
“Challenge is one of volume and message clarity,” reads the opening slide of a presentation that has now been seen by hundreds of party leaders and activists. “Democrats should anchor your economic message around ‘growing the middle class.’”
Hence Bidenomics.
So here’s a Matt Robison video on Bidenomics:
Of course, the media doesn’t talk about it, and it’s a little hard to understand what “Bidenomics” means. But these five facts show just what an economic comeback miracle President Biden has led, and how much better off America is because of it.
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