March 5, 2024 - It's Subpar Tuesday!

… Much voting … Trump ballot ruling … French abortion rights … U.S./Texas immigration battle …

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Super Tuesday Is About to Start the General Election

D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump today is as close as one week away from grabbing the Republican presidential nomination by the delegates. With at least 15 states and one U.S. territory voting today, Trump could clinch as many as 854 delegates.

He needs 1,215 delegates to secure the majority needed to become the numerically presumptive nominee, on top of the 244 he’s already got.

Trump will get a helping hand from the fact that his allies…I wanna say rigged?...GOP contests this year so that the winner gets all the delegates, not a proportionate number. Meaning former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) could come in a close second and walk away with zero delegates for her efforts.

Haley, of course, is continuing to run under the delusion that she can win this race and block the guy who’s running under the delusion that he won the last race.

Anyway, the point is you don’t have to pay attention to today’s voting, just because it’s called Super Tuesday (or in some Republican circles, Über Dienstag), or because TV news outlets treat horserace number-crunching as if it’s journalism.

That Whole Supreme Court Ballot Thing

The right-wing Supreme Court ruled unanimously yesterday that states cannot remove D4FRFP Donald Trump from the ballot merely because the Constitution says insurrectionists can’t hold office. Since it was unanimous, that means the left-wing minority agreed with this opinion.

How are we supposed to fetishize and put liberal judges on pedestals when they don’t vote the way we want them to?!?

This is, of course, yet another case of asymmetric political warfare. The Supreme Court’s three Democratic-appointed judges — Sonia Sotomayor, Elana Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, seen below literally on the outside — argue for the law, while most of the other judges argue for outcomes.

In other words, and I hate to say this, but it’s more than possible that the ruling was correct because the insurrection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment is hot garbage, no more coherent than an ad hoc Trump speech over lobster bisque at Mar-a-Lago.

As usual, the three Democratic appointees played by the rules yesterday — even though the right’s disdain for the rules was so vast that Justice Clarence Thomas didn’t recuse himself even though most of the amicus briefs filed on Trump’s behalf had his wife’s saliva on their envelopes.

But the ruling also leaves open an interesting door by ruling that only Congress can enforce the 14th Amendment ban on insurrectionists holding office. Congress could do that via legislation, which would never pass given the Christian nationalist grasp on power in the House.

But what happens on Jan. 6, 2025? When there’s a new Congress? Would a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives fast-track legislation to enforce the 14th Amendment? Would Democrats have the votes to do that?

Even without legislation, could a Democratic-controlled House refuse to certify a Trump victory?

And even if they did, that could just mean handing the presidency instead to whomever Trump eventually chooses as his vice-presidential running mate, most likely Mike Lindell, Kid Rock, or Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

If it sounds like a shit-show, that’s cuz it’s a shit-show. Either way, this may now be a good question for every Democrat (and Republican!) running for Congress: What would you do?

SOTOMAYOR There’s a chorus of opinion-havers out there now calling on Sotomayor to resign now so that her health issues don’t hand Represident Trump another Supreme Court seat. As the fire of opinion-having consumes you now, remember it’s okay not to have one.

Other Key Races

CALIFORNIA Probably the biggest race on everyone’s radar today is the contest to replace the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Under California’s system, the general election in November will be between today’s top two vote-getters, no matter which party.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) isn’t just hoping he’ll face off in November against the Republicans’ experienced baseball player and rookie politician Steve Garvey — Schiff has been actively trying to help Garvey do well today. That way, Schiff won’t have to compete over the next eight months against a Democrat with an actual chance of winning in November.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) is the party’s strongest number-two contender at the moment. Although it’ll always be a mystery to me why the third top Democratic candidate, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), wasn’t made president by acclamation after being the sole member of Congress with the smarts, integrity, and fortitude to oppose handing then-Pres. George Bush a blank military check after 9/11. Cruel fact of politics: You will be punished for being right too soon.

Also worth watching, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s race. This is yet another of those campaigns where a progressive or at least semi-progressive prosecutor is smeared for not executing suspects on sight in a city invariably portrayed as the set of The Warriors.

Incumbent District Attorney George Gascón is being blamed for a 3% increase in property crimes, but not credited for a drop of more than 3% in violent crime. Neither of which are due to Gascón. How do we know? Because never in the history of crime has a criminal crimed only after conducting a granular analysis of prosecution policies. Cain didn’t kill Abel due to God’s lax policies on bail!

TEXAS Democrats today will pick their candidate to go up against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is still alive despite D4FRFP Donald Trump surgically removing his heart, guts, spine, testicles, and other anatomical metaphors. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez and former NFL player Colin Allred, now a civil-rights lawyer, are the top contenders.

Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-TX) is getting primaried today by multiple challengers from his right flank. How come? Because Gonzalez in 2022 voted to toughen restrictions on gun purchases by criminals. Not all criminals, mind you, just criminals whose crime was violence against a romantic partner.

And why did Gonzalez vote for this? Because as a child he saw his stepfather threaten his mother with a gun and Republicans are allowed to vote for common-sense measures when they have direct, personal experience with an issue and don’t have to rely on abstract humans or “facts.”

And the other reason Gonzalez voted for this, exactly one month after the Uvalde school massacre? Gonzalez represents Uvalde.

That’s right. The far right is primarying Gonzalez today in the Uvalde congressional district, for not being soft enough on gun crime.

Other House races in Texas represent showdowns between rival GOP factions, both local — such as the allies of beleaguered, bescandaled, beunethical Attorney General Ken Paxton – and national, such as the allies of beindicted Trump.

OTHER STUFF As always, Bolts has a comprehensive, thoughtful roundup of everything on the ballot today and everything at stake in every election ever. They’re my go-to, and while I don’t recommend tracking today’s election results for normal people, I recommend Bolts for any Newsfuckers who can’t resist.

Abortion Rights Secured in Constitution Inconveniently Located 3,700 Miles Away

Abortion rights have been enshrined in a country’s constitution for the first time in ever. That country…is France.

The French National Assembly and Senate voted to codify abortion rights during a joint vote yesterday, that required a three-fifths majority. Abortion rights were approved by a vote of 780 to 72.

And America led the way! French lawmakers cited the American right wing’s success in overturning Roe v. Wade as evidence that progress isn’t guaranteed. 

French Senator Mélanie Vogel, who introduced the constitutional amendment, told CQ Roll Call, “Reproductive and sexual rights are shrinking in the world. And here today we want to show that this is not the only path that you can follow. … It can be reversed.”

The amendment is expected to boost tourism revenues, as well, as France becomes the top destination for MAGA vacations hastily scheduled 8-10 weeks after previous vacations.

Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Block Texas Deportation Law

Remember when everyone said that Texas and the U.S. government were about to go to war because Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) was defying the feds in their battle over immigration. And I pointed out that, no, he wasn’t and that this would all play out in the courts?

Welp, it’s playing out in the courts! (Would this be a bad time to suggest becoming a paid subscriber to The Fucking News? Your reliable source for calm and sanity and de-escalation!)

The Biden administration yesterday asked the right-wing Supreme Court to bar Texas from beginning to implement its new deportation law next week. If the court doesn’t intervene, Texas could start deporting people on its own — even if those people still have asylum applications pending with the federal government.

The court ordered Texas to pause implementing its new law until March 13 so that Justice Clarence Thomas can choose one of the bullshit legal arguments his billionaire “friends” are currently emailing him so his assistant can print them out for him to read.

TCB

NICOLE SANDLER Thanks as always to Nicole for having me on her show yesterday, and every Monday. If you want to check it out, or make Fucking News Mondays a weekly thing, just check out her website.

JUSTICE DELAYED I finally posted those Mayorkas impeachment stories yesterday — and promptly lost a batch of subscribers. Which has me thinking maybe I’m going about this the wrong way. Maybe some folks just want one dose per day. Maybe I should split up my substackery into TFN and, separately, original reporting. What do you think?

Lemme know on social media. You can find me on Twitter or Facebook or Bluesky or Mastodon or Quitch or Voobelstank.

Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.