Kingdom Come

Immunity Split Decision, Biden's Choice

Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing vacation. I took a couple weeks off from NextDraft only to return to find American democracy on the brink. At this point, it's no surprise that the Supreme Court was going to use all the time possible to delay a decision (and hence, the case against Trump) in the presidential immunity case. But it is surprising, even by this Court's standards, how far the majority was willing to go toward turning our president into a king. Today the Court issued something of a split decision. Split in the sense that it offered a hell of a lot of immunity but not total immunity. From Chief Justice John Roberts: "At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official." And split in the sense we now have the era of American democracy before this decision and the era that now begins after it. On a practical level, this decision sends things back to the DC court for a series of arguments on which Trump actions were official and which weren't. That will clearly delay things well beyond the November election.

For the deeper level, I'll leave it to the dissenting opinions from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor: "The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today." Jackson: "The majority of my colleagues seems to have put their trust in our Court’s ability to prevent Presidents from becoming Kings through case-by-case application of the indeterminate standards of their new Presidential accountability paradigm. I fear that they are wrong. But, for all oursakes, I hope that they are right. In the meantime, because the risks (and power) the Court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms, I dissent."

My take: While the immunity case started as an almost ridiculous reach by Trump to avoid being held to account for his horrifically anti American actions, this decision has turned it into something even larger. Indeed, I'd advise you to focus less on what the SCOTUS immunity ruling means for the crimes of the last Trump administration and more on what it could mean for the crimes of a possible next one.

+ "Today’s ruling is especially significant in light of Friday’s decision overruling Chevron, because it means that even old agency rules can be challenged anew so long as they produce any contemporary harm. In other words, even understandings of agency authority that are a half-century old can now be challenged on the ground that some recent agency action, however minor, has injured a plaintiff." Another massive pair of rulings from the Court creates an existential crisis when it comes to the ability of federal agencies to set regulations. And those regulations are a big deal. How the Supreme Court's massive Chevron decision will affect climate policy. Justice Jackson: "The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court's holdings in this case and Loper Bright have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government." That, of course, is precisely the goal of the current Court's majority.

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The Clash

"If I go, there will be trouble. And if I stay, it will be double. So come on and let me know, should I stay, or should I go?" —The Clash

If there's any silver lining to the SCOTUS decisions it's that they gave us a brief respite from the heated media debate over how to best react to Joe Biden's worst-fear-confirming debate performance last week. For pretty good examples of the arguments on both sides, we can turn to...

+ The New Yorker's David Remnick on the he should go side: The Reckoning of Joe Biden. "For the President to insist on remaining the Democratic candidate would be an act not only of self-delusion but of national endangerment."

+ And from the Relax, he should stay side, here's Stuart Stevens in the NYT (Gift Article): Democrats: Stop Panicking. "One debate does not change the structure of this presidential campaign. For all the talk of Mr. Biden’s off night, what is lost is that Mr. Trump missed a great opportunity to reset his candidacy and greatly strengthen his position."

+ I've read the articles. I've talked to friends. I've heard from insiders, regular voters, and big time funders, and I've come to the following conclusion about what Biden should do: I really don't know. But I do know that this will ultimately be his choice, and so far, he's staying the course. All the breathless hyperbole aside, there's really one key question right now: Was debate Biden a major exception or was debate Biden an example of what has become his norm. Only a handful of people know the answer to that question and few of them have an incentive to share it -- because if he goes, they go too.

+ Many editorial boards chimed in with their hasty, assured advice. Maybe only the Philly Inquirer nailed it: To serve his country, Donald Trump should leave the race.

3

Align in the Sand

To add a little more stress to America's inside threat, let's consider the threat building on the outside. Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The World Is Realigning. "Like a lightning strike illuminating a dim landscape, the twin invasions of Israel and Ukraine have brought a sudden recognition: What appeared to be, until now, disparate and disorganized challenges to the United States and its allies is actually something broader, more integrated, more aggressive, and more dangerous. Over the past several years, the world has hardened into two competing blocs. One is an alliance of liberal-minded, Western-oriented countries that includes NATO as well as U.S. allies in Asia and Oceania, with the general if inconsistent cooperation of some non-liberal countries such as Saudi Arabia and Vietnam: a Liberal Alliance, for short. The other bloc is led by the authoritarian dyad of Russia and Iran, but it extends to anti-American states such as North Korea, militias such as Hezbollah, terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestine Islamic Jihad, and paramilitaries such as the Wagner Group: an Axis of Resistance, as some of its members have accurately dubbed it."

+ Power is realigning within some national borders as well: Le Pen's party now dominant force in France.

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In the Buff

Today's news probably has you feeling a little nostalgic for the mornings when you could open your browser without a feeling of dread. We can't bring back the old news, but this seems like a good day to bring back the old internet. Aside from the buffering, it was glorious. FastCo: What the internet looked like in 1994, according to 15 webpages born that year. (As a bonus, this look back makes '94 seem young.)

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Extra, Extra

Ozempic Babies: "Some women report that they got pregnant while taking the birth-control pill. Others were previously diagnosed as infertile, but say that they conceived after taking a course of the drugs." Does Ozempic have yet another impact? Does Ozempic boost fertility? What the science says.

+ Beryl of Stun: "Hurricane Beryl made landfall Monday as a powerful Category 4 storm on the Caribbean island of Carriacou in Grenada, as forecasters warned that the first major hurricane of the Atlantic season would bring 'extremely dangerous' conditions."

+ Sea the Light: "Hardly anyone has escaped from North Korea these past four years, since leader Kim Jong Un shuttered his country’s border with China in the earliest days of the pandemic. But Kang Gyu-rin and her mother, aunt and a family friend are among the few. To do so, they used a perilous route that has become almost the only option for escape: by sea." WaPo (Gift Article): How one family escaped North Korea in a rickety boat on the open sea.

+ Costco Habitation: "Costco, the international bulk grocery chain known for its warehouse looks and difficult-to-beat deals, is hard at work on what could be considered its biggest new product launch in years: affordable housing." (You'd never run out of paper towel.)

+ Steve Takes Leave: Steve Bannon surrenders to federal prisonto serve 4-month sentence on contempt charges.

+ Cubed Root: "Corners-first is a common route, since once the corners are solved, the edges can be slotted in with relative ease ... My method was understanding.'" I suppose Erno Rubik would know how to solve this puzzle. NYT (Gift Article): The Rubik’s Cube Turns 50.

+ Youth Movement: Quincy Wilson, 16, becomes youngest U.S. male track Olympian. Meanwhile, 16 year-old "Barcelona winger Lamine Yamal was celebrating ahead of Spain's Euro 2024 round of 16 match against Georgia on Sunday after successfully passing his school exams." And these guys are way behind schedule. This 4-Year-Old Just Climbed New Hampshire’s 48 4000-Foot Peaks.

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Bottom of the News

"Germany’s first School Toilet Summit has met, seeking initiatives across the EU’s biggest country to make facilities less off-putting for children driven to holding it in all day rather than visiting the loos that up to half of pupils have said they try to avoid." German summit aims to flush away bad school toilet experiences.

+ "What does Billy Joel know about being a teenage girl? Enough, it turns out, to have written one of gen Z’s favorite anti-hustle anthems: Vienna, a nearly 50-year-old song that’s been adopted by the under-30s to describe their particular feelings of ennui." (When he said Vienna waits for you, he wasn't kidding...)