The Hall of Fire

Today, 538.com launched its 2024 presidential polling average, which shows Donald Trump leading President Biden nationally by 0.7 points. That's improved by about 1.5 points from a month ago. Trump currently leads Biden in most swing states.

Reuters reports that ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok, would rather shut down the platform than sell it to a company not based in China as required (in the next nine months) by a bill that passed both houses of Congress (with a strong bipartisan majority) earlier this week and was signed into...

Actual exchange (video at link ) between pro-Palestine protesters in New York: “Do you know what NYU is doing?” “About what?” “About Israel. Why are we protesting here?” “I wish I was more educated." But down at the University of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott had a bunch of people arrested in blatant...

The judge in the other of Hunter Biden's federal cases -- the one in Delaware -- also has ruled against Hunter's motions to dismiss. As before, this seems to have been expected by most expert observers. But in my opinion, she says something egregiously wrong: "Defendant's claim is effectively ...

I think it may be helpful to note that Republicans were among the many people who were outraged by the reports of Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein , and other "Hollywood" figures sexually assaulting women and getting away with it, which was a leading impulse behind the passage of the survivor...

I've been busy at work and only read bits of today's news. I see that David Pecker testified that Michael Cohen told him that "Jeff Sessions is the attorney general and Donald Trump has him in his pocket."

Legally, this is not a big deal, but still ... It may not matter legally whether or not Donald Trump really had a months-long affair with Karen McDougal and a one-night stand with Stormy Daniels, but I think the jury would be more inclined to let Trump off the hook if they believed the two stories ...

Let's see someone write an alternate history based on this:

When Donald Trump's attorney said that it could be an official act for a president to assassinate a political rival, I agree that one of the justices should have asked :  "Mr. Sauer, if you lose this case, your client faces some prison time. But if you win it, President Biden could kill your cl...

Most legal commentators seem to fear that Chief Justice Roberts is the swing vote and that he seems inclined to remand this case to the Court of Appeals to more carefully analyze which of Donald Trump's crimes were official acts and which were private acts, and of course Trump will appeal to the Sup...

I think Alito's brain would explode:



Anyway, it sounds like some of the Republican judges are inclined to rule for immunity?

Axios reports : "IDF chief Harzi Helevi and Shin Bet director Ronen Bar secretly visited Cairo on Wednesday for talks with top Egyptian officials about a possible Rafah operation." - - - - - - - - - Meanwhile, the left-leaning Israeli newspaper Haaretz calls for the U.S. to recognize a Pa...

Elon Musk said today that Alex Jones's Twitter account will be reactivated and also streamed a live chat between the two of them plus Andrew Tate (the kickboxer who's been indicted on sex trafficking charges in Romania) and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Edited to add: Michael F...

Rep. Donald Payne, Democrat of New Jersey, has died at the age of 65 after being hospitalized following a heart attack earlier this month.

ABC News has new reporting on how Donald Trump handled classified information as president, based on various sources who apparently have testified in Jack Smith's investigation. Trump has been charged for what he did as a former president, because as president he had an almost unfettered power to re...

NBC reports that earlier this month, the U.S. provided Ukraine with long-range ATACMS ballistic missiles "but did not reveal it publicly for operational security reasons". The missiles were part of a $300 million package that President Biden's administration announced last month. Ukraine h...

Today in The Daily Beast : "Trump is using a GOP compliance firm as a go-between [from five PACs] to pay lawyers, allowing him to hide who he's actually paying. Experts have real questions whether he can do that." Allison Gill points out (citing a 2022 Washington Post article) that this c...

Mother Jones has obtained audio of Steve Bannon on Oct. 31, 2020 discussing election strategy with Guo Wengui, the exiled Chinese billionaire on whose yacht Bannon had been arrested earlier that year.... Guo Wengui (real name Ho Wan Kwok), the exiled Chinese billionaire and Steve Bannon's erstwhile...

The Arizona Republic reports that the state's Republicans today blocked legislation that would have overturned the 1864 law that was upheld yesterday by the state's supreme court and criminalizes almost all abortions. Arizona's House of Representatives voted 32-28 today to repeal the 1864 law. Repu...

And going some 1,600 miles south-by-southwest from Michigan: " Arizona grand jury has indicted Trump allies for 2020 election interference " ( Politico ). Donald Trump is "Unindicted Co-Conspirator 1." (Ken Chesebro is "Unindicted Co-Conspirator 4.") Only some of the ei...