The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

... On Monday Mr Trump's defence team will begin presenting their side, calling the former president's oldest son back to the stand as their first witness. But legal analysts told the BBC that after two damaging weeks of testimony from members of the Trump family, salvaging their case now will be a herculean task.

"It's been a disaster from a legal perspective," said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor and president of West Coast Trial Lawyers.

He believes that Mr Trump is "going to lose this case, and lose badly."  [snip]

Despite the aggressive attacks, experts told the BBC that Mr Trump's legal team had failed to undermine the state's case.

"The defence needs someone to get up there and justify these valuations," Mr Rahmani said. "Accountants, CPAs, real estate experts, appraisers. And they just haven't done that yet."

At this point, they face an uphill battle in salvaging their case, analysts told the BBC.

"The reason that they are in such a bad situation is that the judge has already found that the most important documents in this case were all false," Mr [Mitchell] Epner said. "As of now, the judge has also been given an enormous amount of evidence to show that they were knowingly false, and provided with the intent to defraud."

"Since they don't have the ability to get into a Back to the Future DeLorean and turn back time," Mr Epner said of the defence team, "I can't imagine what they can do to turn around this case."

They can't.  Of course, they'll make their arguments, not to the court but to credulous MAGAt yahoos who want to believe this is political persecution and not bringing a career con man and his crime family to justice.

The bad:

With less than a week before federal spending laws expire, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Saturday unveiled a novel and uncertain plan to temporarily extend funding — but it’s already been rejected by the Senate and White House, increasing the odds of a government shutdown.

Johnson’s proposed stopgap funding bill, called a continuing resolution or “CR,” would leave funds for different federal agencies to expire at different times, according to three people familiar with the House leader’s plans, requiring Congress to confront multiple deadlines in the coming months or risk repeated partial government shutdowns.

The House speaker described the two-step proposal as a move to avoid the massive spending bills that historically have been considered by Congress. [snip]

Funds for military and veterans programs, agriculture and food agencies, and the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development would run through Jan. 19. The remaining government funding — covering the State, Justice, Commerce, Labor and Health and Human Services departments, among others — would expire on Feb. 2.  [snip]

The Democratic-controlled Senate and the Biden administration have already rejected the “laddered” CR, which has never before been attempted.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, on Friday called the staggered funding plan “the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of”...

It's DOA in the Senate, but MAGA Mike isn't interested in keeping the government open.  He's interested in using whatever leverage he thinks he has to force draconian spending cuts to social safety net programs in appropriations bills and to generally sabotage the economic recovery.  With a smirking smile, of course.

The ugly: 

The Biden campaign on Saturday lambasted Donald Trump’s reported plans for an extreme and rapid expansion of his first-term clampdown on immigration if he takes back the White House.

If he wins the 2024 election, Trump intends to reimplement many of his first-term policies, including the so-called Muslim ban and the use of Title 42 to turn away asylum seekers. He also wants to deport migrants by the millions per year, detaining them in large camps while they await expulsion, according to a new report ($$) from the New York Times.

The former president further wants to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants, among other hardline policies.

“Mass detention camps, attempts to deny children born here citizenship, uprooting families with mass deportations — this is the horrifying reality that awaits the American people if Donald Trump is allowed anywhere near the Oval Office again,” Biden campaign spokesperson Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “These extreme, racist, cruel policies dreamed up by him and his henchman Stephen Miller are meant to stoke fear and divide us, betting a scared and divided nation is how he wins this election.”

Trump has repeatedly hinted at these plans at political rallies, where he typically talks at length about the southern border. Stephen Miller, a senior aide who crafted many of Trump’s first-term policies, is once again heavily involved in the planning, according to the Times.

“We’ll stop the invasion on our southern border and begin the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” Trump said during a rally on Saturday in New Hampshire. 

Round them up, put them in "detention" camps, load them in rail cars?  Another chapter in the Christofascist MAGAt Republican playbook revealed.