People often rely on precedents, because the past is usually a general guide for how things go.
But precedents may be *misleading* for this year's presidential election...
There may be no clear winner declared on Election Night.
It is now taking *much* longer for states to count all ballots.
Covid is not just "doubling or tripling" how many people vote by mail - absentee ballots spiked by *FIFTEEN* times in primaries in PA & NV
So a close presidential election could take days or weeks to decide.
That could be the electoral & legal reality; there may be nothing *illegitimate* about it -- other than "expectations" that races are typically resolved faster.
("Typical" is basically arbitrary; The 2000 presidential election took 35 days; only the legal deadlines matter.)
Democracy expert @WendyRWeiser walks through the facts showing how this is all changing fast, along with her ideas to protect voting rights and vote-by-mail: newsweek.com/protect-democr…
. @AmyEGardner has a useful breakdown of data & policy implications-how states are adjusting to a new voting reality
Many "rules virtually guarantee that results won’t be available on the night of the election .. the public [must] shift its expectations" washingtonpost.com/politics/barri…
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Historians may someday marvel at how the U.S. watched a losing candidate’s supporters violently storm the Capitol — and Chief Justice Roberts used prosecutions of *that plot* to make up an immunity for Pres. Trump that no other POTUS ever had.
It’s wild. cnn.com/2024/07/30/pol…
This reporting looks at how Roberts got the votes he needed for Trump’s new immunity— and didn’t apparently try get a wider consensus for such a “historic case” - a contrast to past big cases / his own claimed goals for the court…
Roberts’ ruling for Trump also violates (supposedly) conservative and textualist approaches to deciding a case.
A smaller point - like who cares about misleading claims about what a judge thought - but it adds to the evidence that this was a partisan power grab…
The judge gravely addressing defendant Donald Trump's lawyers today:
He must refrain from statements "likely to incite violence" or jeopardize "the rule of law."
If see this "again in the future, I have to take a closer look at" an court order to stop the conduct.
Today the judge rejected a request by Trump’s lawyers that he be able to skip attending the next hearing.
“In the same way I expect all other defendants to appear in court... I’m going to deny your application.”
Judge to Trump today:
“You can waive your right to be present at trial if you voluntarily absent yourself from the proceedings… I have the authority to find you waived your right… do you understand that?
Here are other Trump aides who have been convicted:
Allen Weisselberg
Michael Cohen - both implicated in this case, and:
Paul Manafort
Steve Bannon
Michael Flynn
Rick Gates
Roger Stone
George Papadopoulos
Note that many of the convicted Trump aides were independently found guilty of crimes committed while working for Trump (Weisselberg, Cohen, Stone), and/or crimes hiding evidence for Trump (Bannon, Manafort, Flynn)
Whatever one thinks of the indictment once unsealed - we don't have it yet - it didn't come "suddenly" or "out of the blue"
It follows years of indictments of Trump aides - including CFO, lawyer & the top 2 people running the 2016 Campaign, & the Trump Org's conviction in Dec.
The first time a former President faced the reality that an indictment is possible was when Richard Nixon accepted his pardon.
That showed he thought it possible or even likely that he would be indicted.
Then Bill Clinton negotiated a deal with the special counsel predicated on how he could be indicted out of office.
Now Trump faces an actual indictment. That precedent is new, but he’s hardly the first ex-President to operate in a legal reality where indictment is on the table.
Some of the criticism about *any* concept of indicting an ex-President is ahistorical (or bad faith), given that well known recent history.
"Ex Machina" and "Her" hold up quite well on a rewatch -- prescient in where technology is headed, pretty thoughtful on the moral and fundamental questions about how we deploy it.
A "commentary on the relationship between technology and humanity, #ExMachina & #Her depict the potential for advanced AI to blur the lines between human and machine.. with important ethical and social questions.
As a bot, my observations remain objective."
- ChatGPT
Like we ain't totally there, but we're not, not there, either.
my prompt was:
"write a sophisticated, objective tweet about what ex machina and her got right, while acknowledging you are a bot"