QOTD -- Who Gets To Be A Citizen

 

"... These newest Trump’s executive orders are little more than a performative stunt, a smack back from a narcissist who doesn’t like to be told no, even by the nation’s highest Court, which usually tells him yes. The EO’s seem unlikely to find much love from the lower courts, given the precedent from Barbara that they are obligated to apply. But we do live in the era of the unitary executive and a Supreme Court that panders to that theory, and sometimes to its current personification. So we will watch; we will see how the administration tries to implement its new policies and how the courts respond.

"The issue of who gets to be a citizen is too important to be left to the whims of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. This whole sordid affair exemplifies why we have laws and why it’s important to be a rule of law country. Trump is trying to change the rules that determine who can be an American to suit his own whims. That’s not how a democracy works. We believe in justice and fairness, not kings. No kings. Not on this issue or any other..." -- Joyce Vance, writing in her "Civil Discourse" Substack on the latest attempt by the Malignant Fascist to rewrite the Constitution's 14th Amendment birthright citizenship language via Executive Order.  No American who believes in the Constitution, and embraces the moral arc that's been running slowly, painfully through our history until the MF showed up, would ever want the likes of him and that ghoul Stephen "Pee Wee Goebbels" Miller deciding who is a citizen.  That's yet another issue that remains to be answered this November, along with whether we remain a democracy or not.

 

QOTD: "Panicking About November"

 

In her Substack "Civil Discourse," former U.S. Attorney and currently a senior fellow with NYU's Brennan Center for Justice Joyce Vance looks at last night's garbage dump from the narcissistic, lying and slurring Malignant Fascist, and draws conclusions:

"Trump’s lies do not bear repeating.

But what is important is understanding what he’s trying to do: He’s searching for a way to legitimize interference in an election he knows his party is going to lose in November. He may not be on the ballot, but it has personal consequences for a man who derives benefit and protection from the presidency. So this is about laying a predicate for intervention and challenges in 2026 and future elections. This could be preparation for using NSPM-7 and going after political opponents. Prepare for the “ghost of Hugo Chavez” to resurface. Trump has a habit of creating fake emergencies and using them to exercise power in unprecedented and illegal ways.

And the irony. Trump: 'I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.'

It’s no longer 2025. The courts and the public are savvy about Trump’s abuses. Everyone who is paying attention understands he is panicking about November."  (our emphasis)

Last night's claim that China interfered in the 2020 election (with the apparent knowledge of his own intelligence agencies at the time) is one of the conspiracies that he wants to employ to undermine the 2026 elections.  To the public, State attorneys general and election officials: forewarned is forearmed. 

 

QOTD: Stick A Fork In It

 

Former Federal prosecutor Joyce Vance writing in her Substack on the corrupt sexual abuser Malignant Fascist on trying to delay and frustrate payment of the judgement he owes to his rape victim, journalist E. Jean Carroll:

"The most annoying thing, from a legal perspective, about Donald Trump is how he plays the delay game, drawing cases out far longer than any other litigant could get away with. He relentlessly files borderline (and sometimes outright) frivolous motions and fights every step of the way, using every motion to reconsider and every other procedural tool available, even when it’s hopeless.

That’s how it felt today in the E. Jean Carroll case. We’ll get to what happened during the day in a minute, but first let’s start with how it ended, just after 10 p.m. ET. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals denied Trump’s request to stay District Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order that it was time for Trump to pay Carroll the $5 million, plus post-judgment interest, that he owes her. The Second Circuit ruled just hours after Trump asked for the stay.

Trump, of course, isn’t done yet. Next, he’ll ask the Supreme Court for a stay. Prediction: It will be similarly unavailing. Stick a fork in this case. It’s done."

It's a sign of how far the culture and corporate media have been degraded to treat this story with a yawn, as if it's commonplace for a U.S. President to avoid paying for his criminal actions, in this case, defamation of his rape victim. But it's time to stick a big fork in the MF's desperate move.

 

QOTD: Fulton County And The 2026 Mid-Terms

 

The always readable Joyce Vance, on her Substack page today, looking at the Malignant Fascist's malign "investigation" of the 2020 election in Fulton County, GA as they relate to the MF's broader attack on voting and our democracy. An excerpt, but her entire article is a must read:

"Trump is famous for caring only about the investigation and not what comes of it. Here, an investigation, no matter its lack of merit, might be seized upon as justification for the state to divest the county of control of its elections. During a Thursday press conference held by leaders in heavily Democratic Fulton County, Election Chair Robb Pitts said: 'We will not give one inch to those who seek to take control of our elections.'

That’s the fear, that this is Trump’s roadmap for corrupting elections in 2026 and beyond, by casting results into doubt, seizing ballots, making more ridiculous claims about fraud in Georgia and beyond, and parlaying them into Republican control of election machinery. When Pitts was asked what he thought the likelihood the GOP-controlled State Election Board would use the search as a pretext for taking control of Fulton County’s election systems, his response was, 'That’s what I’m concerned about.'

There are good reasons for concern. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), was also seen on site during the search. That’s unusual for an official who does not have domestic law-enforcement responsibilities. Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, commented that if there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus, the administration had failed to inform the committee, which is required by law. Or, he said, it’s a 'domestic political stunt.' Tonight, the Wall Street Journal reported that Gabbard has been investigating the results of the 2020 election that Donald Trump lost.

And, perhaps not coincidentally, the FBI special agent in charge of the Atlanta office was removed by Director Kash Patel a week ago. It’s unclear whether that decision was connected to the search warrant in any way." (our emphasis)

The MF's crazed allegation that he actually won the 2020 election were it not for massive fraud has been debunked over and over again, through recounts, audits and court cases, in Georgia and across the nation.  In 2026, these "investigations" are less about the election results in 2020 than in creating a pretext for interfering in the mid-term elections and, should they lose, casting doubt on them.

QOTD: Stand Up To The Bully

 

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance writes in her Substack column that the 2026 elections will be upon us before we know it, and Americans that are sick of the unhinged, bullying Malignant Fascist's cruel regime have an opportunity to elect majorities in Congress. Her bottom line in the interim is to stand up to the bully and don't back down:

"All told, during campaign season, Trump made over 100 threats to prosecute or punish people he perceived as enemies. We’ve seen him make good on that in a series of executive orders, some cloaked in the pretense of concern over anti-Semitism or discrimination (which now means failing to protect white Christians), that target individuals or institutions he thinks have done him wrong. His public directions, presumably to Attorney General Bondi, to investigate people or entities are part and parcel of it. As are the social media posts attacking people, often just for doing their jobs.

It’s no way for the president to run the White House. But elections have consequences, and this is among them following 2024, when just enough Americans stayed home, or bought fake concerns about Biden’s economy, or wanted a change. Some people are so inured to Trump’s bad behavior that they shrug their shoulders and pass it off as “just Trump.” When you hear people doing that, stop and remind them that this isn’t normal or innocent. He is literally on a revenge tour and abusing the powers of the presidency."  (our emphasis)

Her column lists some of the MF's authoritarian models, from Marcos in the Philippines, to Alabama Gov. George Wallace, and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who were turned around by resistance to their ideology. she notes that "our history is full of evidence that we know how to turn the tide."

 

QOTD -- "Project 2025 Comes True"

 

"...While Trump lacks the ability to formally close the Department of Education, he can shrink it to the point of irrelevance and ask Congress to deliver the coup de grace. The 44 pages in the Education Chapter of Project 2025 contain precisely that suggestion. Dismantle the department into a hollow shell that does nothing more than gather statistics.

"My conclusion tonight is the same as it was when I first wrote about Project 2025 and Trump’s plan for public education:

"Trump and the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 authors are afraid of an open marketplace of ideas where kids learn to think for themselves. Kids can learn about—and learn from—the history of slavery in this country. The idea that it must be suppressed because it might make white kids feel bad is ridiculous. The more we know of our history, events like the internment of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II, or the treatment of Irish, Italian, Jewish, and other immigrants as they came to country, the better we can become. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. That seems to be the plan here..." -- Joyce Vance, in "Civil Discourse" on Substack, on the white nationalists' long-term plan to control public education.   Our simpleton "president," whose lack of basic knowledge can't be laid to public education (he attended private schools his whole life), lied during the 2024 campaign about his awareness of Project 2025.  He's since staffed his regime with acolytes of that fascistic blueprint, beginning with one of its authors, now-Director of OMB Russell Vought.  Make no mistake:  from education, to foreign policy, to health and social security, the Malignant Fascist's regime is re-making America into a dystopian image best viewed through a white nationalist filter.

QOTD: "Claim The Judges Are Biased Against You"

Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance takes note of statements that the Malignant Loser has made on his farcically-named "Truth Social" media site trying to undercut the judicial system which has him -- finally -- in their sights. In one rant, the Malignant Loser claims that Republican-appointed judges are timid and eager to compromise, while Democrat-appointed judges are unwaveringly loyal to their party. Vance picks up: 

"The observation is wrong—no need to look further than what the Supreme Court did to Roe v. Wade to appreciate that some Republican appointees to the federal bench are far from impartial jurists. But most federal judges are, setting aside their political affiliation to decide cases based on the facts and the law. There is certainly no indication that judges appointed by Democrats follow some sort of party line as Trump suggests. But here Trump is, again, trying to undercut public confidence in the judiciary ahead of the two significant losses he is about to suffer in civil cases—the New York Attorney General’s fraud case and the second E. Jean Carroll defamation case—and heading into his criminal cases. If you can’t win in court, then claim the judges are biased against you. All of them." (our emphasis)

Vance concludes by recalling words from George Orwell's novel 1984:

"At the start of the Trump administration, I reread George Orwell’s 1984, for the first time in many years, and experienced a frightening resonance between the book and the times we were living in. Orwell wrote about 'doublethink,' which is 'the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.' He wrote, 'Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.' Today, too many people seem to be willing to watch a would-be dictator come to power in this country. We must avoid giving in to complacency. That’s an important part of our job right now. Don’t give up. Don’t think of Trump as inevitable. He’s not, and we’re going to make sure that he doesn’t win."  (our emphasis)

As a narcissistic sociopath, the Malignant Loser can't see beyond his own damaged psyche, and imagines it's himself against a hostile world (excepting his zealous and oblivious cult). Every negative decision against him is illegitimate, because why would anyone question this Very Stable Genius who keeps up the refrain "I did nothing wrong" except someone evil, even when it's caught on a recording, video, etc.?

(photo: Fulton Co. Georgia's mug shot of the seething Malignant Loser)

 

Tweet Of The Day: So Where're The Prosecutions?

From the incomparable Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney, a question that should be asked of lying sociopath and bigot Donald "Rump" Trump and all of his lying enablers:

If 4K terrorists were stopped at the border, you’d expect to see a lot of federal prosecutions. You don’t just let terrorists go when you catch them. So where are the thousands of federal prosecutions we should see if Sanders was accurate? Great reporting by @JuliaEAinsley https://t.co/zEfcT12rEi

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) January 8, 2019

Credit to NBC's intrepid Julia Ainsley for her report that blew up Rump's lie about "terrorists" crossing the southern border in massive numbers. Actually?  Six in the first half of 2018 who were non- US citizens on a list of known or suspected terrorists.

BONUS:  Here's a good read giving background on the terrorist watchlist and "special interest aliens."