Music: Jaga Jazzist — ‘The Shrine’
The reason why Trump might delay replacing Ginsburg
Tim Alberta writes: If there’s one Republican who could be convinced that filling the sudden Supreme Court vacancy is a bad idea, it’s President Donald Trump. There’s no question that the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the trailblazing liberal justice who died Friday at age 87, gives the GOP an opportunity that appears too good to pass up. By replacing Ginsburg with a conservative jurist, Republicans would cement a durable right-wing majority on the high court, one that could deal…
For Republicans, a Ginsburg replacement is ‘worth the White House and Senate’
Alexander Nazaryan writes: Even before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Friday night, November’s presidential election was shaping up to be the most consequential in modern American history. President Trump said so himself, as did his Democratic rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. A procession of crises — the coronavirus pandemic, protests and urban unrest, rampant wildfires — only heightened the sense that, come Nov. 3, voters would choose not merely a president but a direction…
Can Trump and McConnell push through a successor to Ruth Bader Ginsburg?
Jeffrey Toobin writes: In Washington, grief yields quickly to calculation. The announcement of the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Supreme Court Justice and epic figure in American legal history, came in the early evening on Friday. This led to two simple questions that are now preoccupying the Capitol: Can President Trump win confirmation for Ginsburg’s successor before the end of his term? If so, who will it be? The broad outlines of the situation are already clear. Mitch McConnell,…
What Ruth Bader Ginsburg would want America to do now
Dahlia Lithwick writes: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 87 years old when she passed away on Friday night. If you were keeping cosmic score, it was the Jewish New Year and a day for hope and new beginnings. In a world that won’t cast 50-year-old women in films, Justice Ginsburg managed to be an aspiration for the soccer moms and also the middle schoolers and, yes, the toddlers who dressed in tiny glasses and oversized collars for Halloween. She was the…
Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped shape the modern era of women’s rights – even before she went on the Supreme Court
Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg paying a courtesy call on Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., left, and Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., in June 1993, before her confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court. AP/Marcy Nighswander By Jonathan Entin, Case Western Reserve University Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday, the Supreme Court announced. Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement that “Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature.” Even before her appointment, she had reshaped American law. When he…
What Republican senators say in private
Edward-Isaac Dovere writes: Nearly every reporter in Washington has experienced it: A Republican member of Congress says “off the record,” shifts into a quieter voice, and expresses how much he or she doesn’t like President Donald Trump. Soon after, you watch this same elected official speak up in favor of the president—or, more often, avoid saying anything meaningful at all. Sometimes about the same issue that they were complaining about to you in private. Sometimes within the same day. Sometimes…
In an historic wildfire season, it’s time to follow the lead of young campaigners
Bill McKibben writes: The numbers shock, of course: these past weeks, West Coast fires have burned an area the size of New Jersey. The smoke has thickened the air to the point where the pollution is literally off the E.P.A.’s existing charts. Five of the ten largest fires in California history are currently burning. But it’s the color that I think will linger in our minds—the orange not of flames but of the shroud of particulates and fog, which tints…
Is our attention for sale?
On pause — back soon
Due to a family emergency, I won’t be able to update Attention to the Unseen for the next few days. Back soon. PW
With fires raging up and down the West Coast, the instinct to bolt has nowhere to go
Emma Marris writes: The West is on fire and there’s nowhere to run. Up and down Interstate 5, the artery connecting most of the major cities on the West Coast, a pall of thick smoke has turned the sun red. Millions of acres have burned. I’m calling and texting friends in communities across Oregon, Washington, California. A friend who lives in the Medford area of Oregon, where hundreds of homes have been destroyed, has evacuated; another lost her childhood home….
Trump couldn’t resist talking to Bob Woodward
Timothy L. O’Brien writes: Maybe it’s all Senator Lindsey Graham’s fault. “It was Lindsey Graham who helped convince Donald Trump to talk to Bob Woodward,” Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told his TV audience Wednesday night. “Lindsey Graham brokered that meeting. Lindsey Graham even sat in on the first interview between Bob Woodward and the president. How’d that turn out?” It hasn’t turned out well, of course. Trump admitted in a taped interview with the veteran investigative reporter that he…
Trump’s own officials label his Ukraine theory as Russian election interference
HuffPost reports: An anti-Joe Biden conspiracy theory pushed by President Donald Trump, his personal lawyer and his favorite television network has been labeled Russian interference into the coming U.S. election — by Trump’s own administration. “Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday in a statement announcing sanctions against the pro-Russian Ukrainian lawmaker and three Russian employees of…
Leading prosecutor looking into the origins of Russia probe resigns
The Associated Press reports: A federal prosecutor who was helping lead the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe has resigned from the Justice Department, a spokesman said Friday. Nora Dannehy was a top prosecutor on a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, who was appointed last year to lead an investigation into how the FBI and other federal agencies set out to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and whether the Trump campaign…
Peter Thiel met with the racist fringe as he went all in on Trump
BuzzFeed reports: Four years ago, billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook board member Peter Thiel made one of his biggest bets: He went all in on Donald Trump. The normally tight-lipped and enigmatic Thiel gave a very public imprimatur as a prominent speaker at the Republican convention, tying his reputation as one of the most successful figures in modern tech to a presidential candidate despised throughout Silicon Valley. “Tonight,” he said in a nationally televised address at the convention, “I urge…
ICE flew detainees to Virginia so the planes could transport agents to D.C. protests. A huge coronavirus outbreak followed
The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration flew immigrant detainees to Virginia this summer to facilitate the rapid deployment of Homeland Security tactical teams to quell protests in Washington, circumventing restrictions on the use of charter flights for employee travel, according to a current and a former U.S. official. After the transfer, dozens of the new arrivals tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fueling an outbreak at the Farmville, Va., immigration jail that infected more than 300 inmates, one of…