Independent News
Loeffler signs on with stupid part of Trump’s tirade
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While most of the attention on Donald Trump’s bizarre video threatening to blow up the coronavirus relief/government spending deal has been focused on the $2,000 direct payments he’s demanding, there’s the other, stupid, part. Leave to it Georgia Republican Kelly Loeffler to seize on the stupid. “I certainly support redirecting any wasteful spending to be very targeted at families and businesses who have been impacted by this virus through no fault of their own,” she said in Georgia, when asked about Trump’s statement. Pressed on whether that meant she’d vote for $2,000 relief checks, she hedged: “I’ll certainly look at supporting it if it repurposes wasteful spending toward that, yes.”
So about that “wasteful spending.” The stupid part. “It’s called the COVID relief bill,” he railed, “but it has almost nothing to do with COVID.” That’s because this bill is linked to the larger government spending bill, which includes foreign aid funding—and $1.4 trillion to fund the federal government for the remainder of the fiscal year. “This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia, $134 million to Burma, $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy almost exclusively Russian military equipment, $25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan, $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama,” Trump complained. All of which was what the Trump administration asked for in its funding request for 2021. Trump not only had no idea what was in his budget proposal, he seems not to comprehend that none of this is supposed to be COVID relief, that he’s looking at two separate bills. Because why would he comprehend any of that? But Loeffler should know better, and probably does.
She’s trying to answer two masters here, Trump and McConnell, and doing it poorly. Because of course she is, why would she do any better? It’s not like she’s trying to be an actual public servant.
She’s got to go. Please give $3 right now to send her, and the GOP Senate packing.
Some incoming Republican freshmen want to carry their firearms into congressional chambers
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Here’s a heartwarming story for the holiday season. Members of Congress can carry firearms into various congressional office buildings, but not into the Senate and House chambers at the Capitol. At Axios, Kadla Goba reports that several incoming freshmen members—who apparently won’t be satisfied until they can go strapped into every nook and cranny of the nation—have inquired about the ban. According to an unnamed aide, this has prompted the body responsible for congressional security, the Capitol Police Board, to review it.
One of those soon-to-be members, Republican Rep.-elect Laurie Boebert, whom the voters picked last month to represent Colorado’s conservative 3rd District, operates Shooters Grill, a gun-themed restaurant in the city of Rifle, and holsters a semi-automatic Glock pistol everywhere she goes. An unnamed source told the Associated Press a month ago that Boebert had inquired about carrying her weapon in the Capitol when she and other newly elected members came to Washington for orientation.
A kindred spirit can be found in the hardcore QAnon conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene, the representative-elect from Georgia’s 14th congressional district. She said in a written statement, “Not only do I support members of Congress carrying a firearm, I believe every American has that right. I will work every day to end ALL gun free zones.” This presumably includes the visitors galleries in congressional chambers where anyone with an easily acquired pass can watch the proceedings.
Washington, D.C., has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, but court rulings in the past dozen years have weakened them just as state governments have weakened their own gun laws under pressure since the mid-1980s from the National Rifle Association and even more extreme gun lobbies. Under a half-century-old congressional regulation, however, no federal or District of Columbia laws “shall prohibit any Member of Congress from maintaining firearms within the confines of his office” or “from transporting within Capitol grounds firearms unloaded and securely wrapped.”
If they wanted to, members could easily violate the ban on carrying in congressional chambers because they are privileged to go around the metal detectors set up to stop visitors from wandering through the Capitol armed. In addition to Buck, several members are known to keep firearms in their House or Senate offices. But when Democrats on the House Committee on Administration asked Capitol Police two years ago exactly how many lawmakers carry firearms, they received no reply.
Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman of California’s 2nd District told the AP in 2018, “Members could have a loaded AK47 sitting on their desk and no one would ever do anything about it.” That’s no exaggeration. In 2015, after notifying Capitol Police, Colorado’s 4th District Rep. Ken Buck brought his AR-15 imprinted with American flags to his office and stashed it there after posing for a photo. Having a gun in the office just isn’t good enough, however, for 2nd Amendment absolutists who apparently believe the nation’s founders would approve even though there is no evidence any of them carried their flintlocks into congressional chambers.
Although numerous elected Democrats are gun-owners, those cited by Axios were opposed to ending the ban. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan’s 8th District said, “I know that [members carrying guns] are here. And I think that ban should continue. And if there’s folks who are suggesting that they’re going to do otherwise, then the Capitol Police and the sergeant at arms should make clear to them what the rules are and the consequences.”
Said Rep. Ruben Gallego of Arizona’s 7th District, “We’re in a very secure area of this Capitol. I think it’s more for making a political statement than a personal security, and I think this is not the place for that.”
Likewise, the Republicans Axios contacted expressed support for ending the ban. Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s lone member in the House who as Conference Chair ranks third-highest the House Republican leadership, said ditching the ban is okay with her. “I am proud of all of the members we’ve elected and their defense of our Second Amendment rights.”
In the olden days, many towns like Dodge City, Kansas, now iconic for their 19th century Wild West reputations, required the era’s gun toters within the city limits to check their firearms with the local marshall or other authorities. Republicans clearly think that doing likewise at the door of the House or Senate chamber would violate the sacred rights of today’s gun toters.
Trump’s latest pardons are moves to corrupt laws that he stands accused of breaking himself
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There are no non-corrupt justifications for Donald Trump’s latest batch of pardons. None. There’s no nuance to them, or but on the other hand reasons why these particular politically connected criminals and conspirators against their nation ought to have their punishments nullified after their criminal acts have been proven—including with admissions of their own guilt.
George Papadopoulos worked as an adviser for Trump’s 2016 campaign. It was Papadopoulos who bragged to an alarmed Australian official that Russia was offering to help the Trump campaign by anonymously releasing information intended to damage opponent Clinton, one of multiple acts by the Trump campaign that caught the eye of this nation’s intelligence services as Russia mounted an unprecedented hacking and propaganda campaign aimed at promoting their own choice of American president.
But Papadopoulos lied to the federal agents investigating Russia’s espionage on behalf of Trump, as did numerous other Trump campaign officials—and Trump has repeatedly issued pardons and otherwise worked to dismantle the prosecution of each campaign official who lied about the campaign’s actions. He continues to use the pardon power to reward and immunize those in his circle who have the most information as to what he, personally, knew of the Russian scheme and how he and his family responded to it.
There is only one possible motivation for this, and we all know what it is.
The reasons for Trump’s pardons of a trio of corrupted and disgraced House Republicans are similarly unobscured. This is because Trump is genuinely a malignant narcissist, in the clinical sense of the phrase, and is so impaired by delusional self-regard that he sees all world events as machinations designed to either celebrate him or discredit him.
Duncan Hunter, along with his wife, was caught stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his campaign for his own personal use and for his family. It was straight-up theft of donor money, and Hunter eventually pled guilty. Some of the money was used by Hunter to cheat on his wife in secret affairs.
This sounds exactly like the sort of thing Donald Trump would want to bend U.S. laws to allow, and would be most eager to use his new near-magical powers to sabotage prosecution of—because Donald Trump still stands accused of doing very close to the exact same thing. Trump violated campaign laws to hide affairs, a crime that his once-lawyer pled guilty to and implicated Trump in. Trump and family are accused of misusing donated inauguration funds, just as Trump is now known to have pocketed funds from his self-named supposed “charity.”
Chris Collins lied to the FBI after being caught, literally, engaging in insider trading on White House grounds. Both the financial crookery and the lying to conceal evidence are things that Trump, himself, is attempting to dodge consequences for.
Steve Stockman is a money launderer who, again, attempted to steal charity funds. Donald Trump is an accused money launderer whose connections to organized crime have piqued investigator interest for decades, and who in multiple new media investigations appears to have engaged in both tax dodges and bank fraud.
The message of all three pardons is clear, because Trump’s brain simply cannot produce nuance. Trump continues to pardon loyalists facing punishment for crimes he himself has freely engaged in. Trump wishes to nullify punishment for those crimes, and to discredit their prosecution in the same manner as he still seeks to discredit any probe into Russian assistance. He aims to inoculate himself from prosecution for financial crimes by pre-declaring that all such prosecutions are political tricks. He is a dull but crooked man, and does only dull and crooked things.
And then there are the Blackwater killers. Trump’s pardons of four private mercenaries in the employ of private security firm Blackwater when they opened fire indiscriminately on civilians in a Baghdad square remains a shocking national betrayal even after few other Trump actions still provoke shock. The four were found guilty after a massacre that served to discredit America’s armed forces in the country and stoke terrorism against Americans. Among the dead was a 9-year-old, Ali Kinani, shot in the head by the Blackwater guards; his father is reacting to Trump’s new endorsement of his son’s murder with appropriate emotion.
But the pardons serve two uncomplicated purposes, for Trump. Trump has repeatedly pressed the military and federal law enforcement alike—as well as his own rally crowds—to respond with more aggression and violence, suggesting multiple times that if the laws are against such things, he could use his presidential powers to undo the legal damage. Here he has again done so, explicitly. Trump campaigned on the notion of being more thuggish toward immigrants; Trump oversaw a new push to get federal executions done more speedily, and with fewer restrictions; Trump pardoned an Arizona sheriff infamous for cruel treatment of both immigrants and Americans his officers only suspected might be immigrants. Trump has declared himself a fan of violent crimes targeting the right people, and here, again, acts on it.
The other reason for these specific pardons, rather than any others: Blackwater was the mercenary company founded by Erik Prince, a Trump loyalist and the brother of Trump’s wealthy secretary of education Betsy DeVos. Immunizing Erik Prince’s forays into for-profit paramilitarism is of enormous benefit to Prince’s future endeavors and to his own political power; it builds the wealth and clout of the entire DeVos family.
That is how the convicted war criminals came to Donald’s attention in the first place, and why it may have been especially delicious for him to pardon these criminals rather than any others. These war criminals were in the employ of Trump’s wealthy allies. It is of great interest to Trump to send the message that the wealthy, in particular, have a right to orchestrate violence if it in their interest to do so.
Trump was always a shallow man, and was always a broken one. If we are to believe the accounts of his early rise, he has considered himself above both laws and morality on account of birthright for his entire sentient life. He conducted his financial affairs with contempt for the law and, with rare exception, was never called to account—only to have his political career cause closer examination of what turned out to be decades of tax dodging and fraud. He fancies himself a fascist superman, and in the throes of decompensation after a failed presidency and election his mind and his attentions have only lurched further toward proving it to the world, no matter how outlandish or destructive the results might be.
It will get worse. He will almost certainly pardon his family, a blanket pardon that does not recognize the charges of Russian cooperation but which nonetheless immunizes all involved from that investigation and from every financial crime, real or suspected, any ever engaged in. He will include himself. He may yet issue more pardons directed specifically at the violent far right, pardons aimed at encouraging actual terrorism on his behalf.
Republicans who themselves might benefit from his manipulations will pretend to be shocked or will dodge the implications. The media will report dutifully, but will attempt to find normalizing context so as to not state boldly that Trump is simply what he appears to be: The leader of a particularly dimwitted organized crime ring centered around collecting power, cash and adoration for himself and those willing to pledge loyalty. One who has been given the power to discredit, if not nullify, whatever laws he himself face the most legal danger from, or which stand in the way of his own self-enrichment.
The man is a crook, and nothing else. He does not have Nixon’s complexity; he does not believe, like a litany of past Republican officials caught in crimes, that bending laws is justified if it is in service to a larger, ideological goal. He is simply a crook, a self-centered husk attempting to fill itself with money and admiration while considering the rest of the world to be, at best, the stage created for him to do so. His crimes are for himself; his alliances exist fleetingly, and only for self-interest.
He is just a crook, and that is all.
Trump throws McConnell, Perdue, and Loeffler under the bus: Ossoff and Warnock pounce
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Whether or not it was his intent, impeached two-time popular vote sore loser Donald Trump threw Mitch McConnell under the bus Tuesday with his demand that Congress come back with $2,000 stimulus checks for everyone. He also put the Republican Senate as a whole on the spot, particularly the two in Georgia who are in the middle of tight runoff elections.
In reporters’ inboxes first thing this morning: “Reverend Warnock Calls On Kelly Loeffler To Support $2,000 Stimulus Checks For Georgians.” Warnock’s statement is simple: “Donald Trump is right, Congress should swiftly increase direct payments to $2,000. Once and for all Senator Loeffler should do what’s best for Georgia instead of focusing on what she can do for herself.” Tuesday night, following Trump’s bizarre statement, Jon Ossoff jumped on board.
Ready to reach voters in Georgia, whether by phonebanking or textbanking, for the Jan. 5 runoff? Click to sign up for a training with Fair Fight—the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams—and they will set you up with what you need to start effectively reaching out to Georgia voters.
On CNN Tuesday night, Ossoff added “President Trump is, as ever, erratic and all over the place. But on this point, tonight, he’s right. […] $600 is a joke. They should send $2,000 checks to the American people right now because people are hurting.” He continued “David Perdue, my opponent, who opposed even the first round of $1,200 checks […] has obstructed direct relief for the last eight months, and now decided he wanted to cut it down to 600 bucks when people can barely feed their families through no fault of their own.” Warnock tweeted “Billionaire @KLoeffler thinks $600 will cover your rent, groceries, and hospital bills,” Tuesday night in response to Trump.
So now Loeffler and Perdue are totally on the spot: stick with Trump and call for the money and thereby screw McConnell—who finally acquiesced to doing the bill in the first place precisely because the two “are getting hammered” on stimulus, or stick with McConnell who has been shoveling tens of millions into their races through Super PACs aligned with him. Which is no less than any of these Republicans deserves.
But it is a great opening for Ossoff and Warnock, one that they’ve been quick to jump on.
For the 40th consecutive week, Americans file more than a million claims for jobless benefits
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New applications for unemployment insurance benefits fell 11% for the week ending Dec. 19, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. At 1.2 million claims, new applications remained far above pre-pandemic levels, with 892,000 filing for state programs and 398,000 for federal programs. More than a million new applications have been filed every week since mid-March.
As bad as this is for the affected individuals and their families, the $900 billion relief package passed by both houses of Congress but not yet signed by Donald Trump includes 11 more weeks of eligibility for the two federal pandemic emergency programs that kick in when workers exhaust their state benefits or aren’t eligible for them. The federal emergency programs were slated to expire the day after Christmas, giving workers a possible 39 weeks of benefits. If the relief legislation is signed, most jobless Americans will be able to collect unemployment checks for a total of 52 weeks. In addition, $300 will be added each week to those benefits, which average about $320 a week nationwide. Checks with those extra dollars won’t arrive for “three to four weeks minimum,” said Elizabeth Pancotti, a policy adviser at the pro-worker advocacy group Employ America. But it could take six to eight weeks.
For millions of out-of-work Americans who have been struggling financially since the pandemic began, especially in the past five months since the July 31 expiration of an extra $600 a week in benefits under the CARES Act passed in March, this temporary lapse in overall benefits will add one more round of pain:
That’s because state workforce agencies preprogrammed benefits to expire on Dec. 26. Resetting the systems requires extensive programming changes that will cut off nearly 12 million Americans from receiving benefits until new code is implemented.
States can’t begin writing the new code until they receive guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor, Pancotti added.
Without the extension of unemployment benefits, some 4.8 million Americans would have fallen into poverty come January, say researchers at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. Some 4.6 million people—about 37% of the unemployed—have seen their jobs vanish permanently.
Had the Republicans under Mitch McConnell in the Senate not refused to even consider negotiating two more relief bills passed by House Democrats in May and October, retail sales might not have taken the hits they did in the past two months. In November, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday, retail sales fell 1.1%, the worst drop in seven months. Not coincidentally, it also reported that personal income for the month fell 1.1%. Lower sales means more furloughs and layoffs, which means less income, which means further declines in sales.
Said senior policy analyst Michele Evermore at the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy organization for workers’ rights, “It’s important to remember that over two-thirds of unemployed workers are now long-term unemployed. They have likely burned through their savings. We are seeing more poverty, hunger, and homelessness.”
The Economic Policy Institute last week published five charts showing some impacts of the Pandemic Recession, including these two:
Pfizer will sell U.S. an additional 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine
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Team Trump has partially rectified its gross screw-up of having repeatedly turned down the chance to buy additional doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. The U.S. will now get an additional 100 million doses by July 31, 2021.
“With these 100 million additional doses, the United States will be able to protect more individuals and hopefully end this devastating pandemic more quickly,” Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing our work with the U.S. government and healthcare providers around the country.”
The U.S. already had a deal with Pfizer for 100 million doses and had already increased its number of doses with Moderna, the second vaccine to get emergency authorization, to 200 million. This new deal means 400 million doses, enough to vaccinate 200 million people out of the total U.S. population of 330 million.
Pfizer will get close to $2 billion for this set of doses, as it did for the first set.
Chaos reigns as Trump upends government funding, COVID-19 relief
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Here we go again: 221 days ago, the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act for coronavirus relief. That bill had another round of $1,200 direct payments to people. So did the compromise $2.2 trillion bill they passed 82 days ago. The occupier of the Oval Office didn’t do a goddamned thing to try to force Mitch McConnell into working with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to get that relief passed.
So now Trump is derailing the just-passed coronavirus relief effort, probably just to screw McConnell for the sin of admitting publicly that Joe Biden won the election. He’s demanding Congress send him a bill with $2,000 direct payments. Pelosi had the right answer: “Let’s do it!” And congressional Democrats piled on, putting the onus on McConnell to “DO THIS!” as Sen. Chuck Schumer tweeted. So what happens now? Who knows? It’s Trump.
What we do know is that the House is in for a short, pro-forma session Thursday, Christmas Eve. Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer are ready to use that session to ask for unanimous consent and pass a bill this week to release those $2,000 checks. That bill is ready and waiting, courtesy Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashica Tlaib. However, it only takes one Republican to be on the floor Thursday to block that and that’s probably what’s going to happen. But! On Monday, Democrats can come back (which they were planning on anyway) and put the bill up under suspension of the rules, the procedure they use to pass non-controversial bills, or in this case a bill to put even more pressure on Mitch McConnell. Suspensions require 2/3 majority, which could be achievable on the Monday after Christmas, and can only happen on Mondays and Tuesdays. So those are the House options.
Complicating every damned thing is that the combined coronavirus relief bill is linked to an omnibus spending bill and that the package was so massive, Congress couldn’t just pass it all in one go and get it on Trump’s desk for a signature before the government funding ran out under the then-current continuing resolution. So when they passed it Monday evening, they also passed a seven-day continuing resolution, giving them time to actually print the thing, get all the officials’ signing-off done, and ship it to Trump. Trump signed off on that CR, which expires Monday night. So there’s a government shutdown threat embedded in Trump’s maybe refusing to sign the relief bill. Not only would the government shut down, the emergency extension for unemployment benefits expires this week and it wouldn’t be re-upped. So while Trump is saying everyone deserves $2,000, he’s also willing to cut them of unemployment insurance (though the chances of his being aware that this is even a thing are slim).
For his part, McConnell hasn’t said anything in response. But a couple of Republican senators piped up to support Trump’s call for more money. Sen. Lindsey Graham tweeted “Appreciate the fact that Speaker Pelosi supports President @realDonaldTrump’s idea to increase direct payments to $2,000 per person. The American people are hurting and deserve relief. I know there is much bipartisan support for this idea. Let’s go further.” Sen. Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri who has been pushing for larger direct payments for months tweeted “workers deserve much more than $600, as I have repeatedly said & fought for. And there’s obviously plenty of $$ to do it – look at what Congress threw away on corporate giveaways & foreign buyouts. Let’s get it done.”
The bill will probably not reach Trump until Thursday or Friday. That’s where we stand as of now. The last word for the moment goes to Pelosi:
New district data shows Idaho’s ‘Mormon corridor’ returned to the GOP fold in 2020
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Idaho once again proved itself as one of the reddest states in the nation this year: As in 2016, it gave Donald Trump his fifth-best margin in the country in November. But without the presence of conservative independent Evan McMullin on the ballot this time, the contours of the 2020 elections looked different, especially when drilling down to the congressional district level.
Four years ago, Idaho was McMullin’s second-strongest state after Utah, thanks to the large Mormon population in the state’s southeastern corner along the Utah border. That region is contained in the 2nd Congressional District, which Trump won 54-30, with McMullin taking 9% and Libertarian Gary Johnson 4%. This time, he carried it 60-37, as many once-squeamish Mormon voters returned to the Republican fold.
McMullin’s impact was considerably smaller in the 1st District, which runs along Idaho’s western border all the up through the northern panhandle. In 2016, Trump won the 1st 64-25, while McMullin and Johnson won 4% apiece; this year, Trump dominated the district 67-30. Needless to say, both of the state’s Republican members of the House easily won reelection. (Click here for our full-size map.)
Idaho’s district boundaries have remained remarkably stable for a long time, and there’s no sign that they’ll shift much as we head into the next round of redistricting. Though Republicans control every branch of state government, they won’t be in charge of producing new maps. Instead, the constitution hands authority to an independent bipartisan commission evenly divided between the two parties, with a two-thirds majority required to pass any plans. Naturally, Republicans have tried to pass an amendment that would stack the commission in their favor, but they haven’t been successful yet.
P.S. If you haven’t done so yet, you’ll want to bookmark our complete data set with presidential results by congressional district for all 50 states, which we’re updating continuously.
Body cameras off, police killed unarmed man in Columbus, Ohio
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Three weeks after a county sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Casey Goodson Jr. in Columbus, Ohio, a police officer has shot and killed another Black man in the same city. The latest victim, whose name has not yet been released, was unarmed. Goodson’s family has said that he was carrying just his mask and some Subway sandwiches when he was shot, while sheriff’s deputies have insisted he was armed. (It is an established fact that police routinely lie about these things.)
In the Tuesday killing, which happened around 1:37 AM, the police officer did not turn on his body camera until after he was done shooting. A feature on the cameras shows what happened in the 60 seconds before it was turned on, but without audio, so the police remain free to lie about what the victim said.
Police were called because a man was in a garage turning an SUV on and off, they said. “In the body camera footage, the police said, it appears that the man walked toward the officers with a cellphone in his left hand,” The New York Times reports. “An officer then opened fire.”
Then there was “a delay” in giving the victim first aid—a frequent occurrence, as The Marshall Project has found—and he died at a hospital.
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said that the police officer having his body camera off until after the shooting, in violation of department policy, “disturbs me greatly.” Yeah. Well. Maybe if there were serious penalties attached to things like that it wouldn’t happen so often. For that matter, maybe if there were serious penalties attached to the killing of unarmed people it wouldn’t happen so often. But as we well know, there’s no accountability when it comes to police and Black lives.
Biden promised the Supreme Court’s first Black woman justice. He needs Ossoff and Warnock to do that
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“I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court, to make sure we, in fact, get every representation,” then-candidate Joe Biden promised. That was way back in the before times, in the South Carolina debate last February. Now poised to fulfill that promise as president-elect (when a vacancy opens), Biden needs a Senate that will do it. One that doesn’t have Mitch McConnell as majority leader.
That means getting Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate and ending McConnell’s stranglehold on that body. Certainly if there is any hope at all of expanding the courts to dilute the polluting effects of Trump and McConnell—admittedly a real long shot now—the Democrats must have the majority. But even for a Supreme Court that finally looks a little like America, the Court Biden says he wants, Georgia is the key. “The lesson that we learned from the recent Supreme Court nominations is that Mitch McConnell’s rule around judges is power,” National Women’s Law Center President Fatima Goss Graves told Irin Carmon at New York magazine. “That is the only operating theory. And that is terrible for the country.”
Ready to reach voters in Georgia, whether by phonebanking or textbanking, for the Jan. 5 runoff? Click to sign up for a training with Fair Fight—the voting rights group founded by Stacey Abrams—and they will set you up with what you need to start effectively reaching out to Georgia voters.
But did Biden really mean it? By all accounts, yes. His shortlist is already in the works to be ready by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2021. There are two candidates whose names are circulating most among the legal insiders Carmon spoke with: “California State Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger and federal district court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former clerk to the oldest current Supreme Court justice, Stephen Breyer.” They are both young in their mid-40s, and have exemplary experience and credentials.
“When you think about the African American community and communities of color, we are fighting for our lives,” says Kim Tignor, who advises the advocacy group Demand Justice. She’s also a co-founder of the She Will Rise initiative for the group. “Part of it is about capacity. There’s a barrier to understanding just how close the Supreme Court is to our lives,” she says about the group’s work and the criticality of a Black woman on the highest court of the land. “It’s understandable that the Supreme Court just feels like a long game,” Tignor says. “One of the things I wanted to do with She Will Rise is to make these connections with Black communities. You want to have a conversation about police reform? Let’s talk about the doctrine of qualified immunity.”
That means taking the discussion about control of the Senate in the Georgia run-off elections beyond the Democrats vs. Republicans political frame to what it means for Black lives. Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter in Atlanta, told The Guardian that the court is particularly salient in this race. “It can’t just be about we want to control the Senate. Somebody who’s not engaged is going to ask why they should care about that. We have got to say we’ve got to control the Senate because healthcare is on the line, because the Voting Rights Act is on the line, because racial justice and whether or not police officers and district attorneys are able to continue to get qualified immunity when they kill black folks, that’s on the line,” he said.
The first Black woman Supreme Court justice is on the line, and with that Black lives. Literally. Which of course brings us back to control of the Senate and the Ossoff and Warnock races. Who controls the Senate means everything for the country.