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On Friday, President Joe Biden visited with the Pope. As America’s second Catholic president, the fact that Biden was able to drop in at the Vatican for a cordial chat without it being the subject of heavy media speculation based on anti-Catholic sentiment is actually a very big deal, and a big change from when then-President John F. Kennedy visited Rome in 1963. Conservative Catholics in the U.S. aren’t likely to be happy that Pope Francis told the president that he is a “good Catholic” who should continue to receive communion. But then, the Ross Douthat and Cardinal Burke contingent have long decided that they are more Catholic than the Pope, so those statements are unlikely to dim their exclusionary hate. Everyone else can just lean back and enjoy Biden’s smile after a meeting that clearly pleased both men, and ended with that most Biden of statements, “God love ya.”

CNN reports that President Biden was “excited” about the meeting and spent much of the 90-minute visit speaking on personal topics. Biden was relaxed and happy enough to try out the, “Hi, I’m Jill’s husband” line on some of the Vatican officials he greeted before going inside. He appeared to leave the meeting energized and enthusiastic.

But the significance goes beyond Biden’s attitude. The fact that Biden left the Vatican with the reassurance that someone can both support a woman’s right to choose and be a Catholic in good standing is a win. A real win. One that can have genuine impact on future elections and one that should help quiet concerns for millions of Catholics in America and the world.

Which is good, because Biden needs that win. After the meeting with Francis, Biden is slated to meet with Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi and French President Emmanuel Macron. Both of those meetings are prelude to a G20 meeting that’s expected to be extremely challenging, followed immediately by a climate summit that’s going to demand more than just waving a hand toward good ideas. 

The focus in the U.S. may remain on beating out the last details of what survives from Biden’s Build Back Better plan, but this week is a reminder that the planet doesn’t actually end where the Potomac empties into Chesapeake Bay. There’s a world out there, and 100% of it is in trouble.

The last time the U.S. participated in a G20 meeting was spent with Trump attempting to persuade foreign leaders to abandon the Paris climate agreement. Thankfully, Trump was unsuccessful.

Three senior officials told Politico reporters that Trump had been pressuring Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Turkey to withdraw their support for the G20’s commitment to the 2015 accord. It didn’t work. In fact, French President Emmanuel Macron gave notice early on that he would veto the final communiqué if it weakened the G20’s support for the accord.

This followed the previous G20 meeting in which Trump “pressed fast forward on the decline of the United States” as part of a war on western democracy, creating the “biggest threat to the values of the west.”

In both meetings, Trump ended up as an isolated figure, railing against allies, defending authoritarian regimes, screaming that the climate crisis is a hoax, and sneering at the knowledge and experience of global leaders.

Against that background, President Biden has a monumental task. He not only has to work through critical issues from the climate to the pandemic, but to restore trust of other nations that America can take a responsible role in world leadership. That doesn’t mean that Biden is likely to put America back at the prow of the international ship of state—Trump sank that role, perhaps for good—but he has to at least drag the U.S. back from the position of international pariah following four years of committed anti-democratic, anti-science, anti-environmental chaos.

The New York Times reports that as he was coming out of his meeting with Pope Francis, Biden could not resist telling one of the “folksy” stories that he unspools so often; this one about Black baseball player Satchel Paige.

“Usually, pitchers lose their arms when they’re 35,” said Biden. “He pitched a win on his 47th birthday. The press walked into the locker room and said—his name was Satchel Paige—they came in and said, ‘Satch, no one’s ever pitched a win at age 47. How do you feel about pitching a win on your birthday?’ He looked at them and said, ‘Boys, that’s not how I look at age. I look at it this way: How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?’”

Biden then said he felt 60. Let’s hope that’s young enough for him to still pitch a winning game at the G20 and at the COP26 climate meeting in Glasgow.

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Rep. Katie Porter showed exactly how little the oil industry cares about combating climate change through the creative use of props during a House Oversight Committee hearing on Thursday. Porter has consistently been critical of the world’s worst polluters and even signed a pledge not to take money from them. She knows how much fossil fuel companies stand to gain by refusing to adequately address climate change.

During Porter’s questioning of Shell President Gretchen Watkins, the California congresswoman held up a jar filled to the brim with M&Ms, each of which represented about $50 million. Altogether, the M&Ms signified upwards of the $22 billion Shell’s 2020 annual report called for spending on renewable energy in the near term. The near term must add up to almost a decade, because Watkins said Shell is only spending $2 billion to $3 billion on renewables this year.

Porter noted that Shell will be spending between $16 billion and $17 billion this year on oil, gas, and chemical operations, with another $3 billion going towards marketing. “Mrs. Watkins, to me, this does not look like an adequate response to one of the ‘defining challenges of our time,’” Porter said, quoting Watkins’ own testimony. “This is greenwashing,” Porter added.

Soon after, Porter questioned Mike Sommers, who serves as president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API). Sommers’ testimony was short on concrete details about combating climate change but long on promises of reducing “emissions while still providing affordable, reliable energy.” Much of what Sommers highlighted focused squarely on continuing to use fossil fuels and repairing existing fossil fuel infrastructure instead of taking the necessary action to eliminate harmful emissions. Porter zeroed in on the API’s habit of leasing large swaths of land, much of which they’ve yet to exploit.

The API has been adamant about continuing this practice and has called on the federal government to lift the leasing ban that prevents it from accumulating even more acres. It’s been a back-and-forth legal battle between the Biden administration and those challenging the ban. And it’s not like the API doesn’t have substantial acreage on its hands. Porter noted that the API controls 13.9 million acres of federal land it has yet to use. That’s as large as the states of New Jersey and Maryland combined.

Porter found an even better illustration of this by buying up massive sacks of rice. Each grain of rice represents one acre, so it would take 479 pounds to account for the federal land API members are sitting on. A special shoutout to Porter’s vanity plate, which reads “OVRSITE.”

The hearing Porter participated in on Thursday was titled “Fueling the Climate Crisis: Exposing Big Oil’s Disinformation Campaign to Prevent Climate Action.” It kicked off a larger investigation lawmakers are hoping will force fossil fuel companies to take accountability for the ways in which they continue to do business. “The idea is for them to admit to the American people what they have done,” Rep. Ro Khanna told Reuters.

In the meantime, Americans are hoping Porter continues to expose the fossil fuel industry for its negligence and refusal to enact meaningful change in the face of climate change.

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On Thursday, after weeks and weeks of goalpost-moving, constant compromising on what was already a compromise, incoherent messaging, and consternation, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema finally agreed to something. That ‘something’ mimics the many campaign promises President Joe Biden (and most of the Democratic Party) made to voters this past election cycle. The Build Back Better (BBB) plan that was supposed to include lots of climate change initiatives, paid family leave, expanded Medicare coverage for vision and dental, and government negotiation on prescription drugs, will now have some climate change stuff. Better than nothing? Eh.

That’s the clear hope of people like Manchin and Sinema, who have allowed their corruption and cynicism (and possibly pathological narcissism) to torpedo their own chances at having a meaningful legacy of service to the American people. While Manchin’s one driving force is his own corruption and that of his corrupt family, Sinema’s motivations have been hard to pin down. Either way, both senators have let down the American people and have greatly hurt other Democratic candidates and incumbents’ chances in the coming months. What will happen next remains a mystery as House Democrats, who agreed to the original compromise of $3.5 trillion spent over 10 years to be coupled with a reconciliation package, are now in a place where the White House is desperate to get something passed and Sens. Manchin and Sinema have shown they are not trustworthy people—at all.

On Thursday, as the White House announced it had a “framework” agreed on to some mysterious degree by the two senators most likely to be found staring at themselves in on their phones, those two decided to release statements lauding themselves. The responses to these two statements were intense.

Kyrsten Sinema wrote, “After months of productive, good-faith negotiations with@POTUS and the White House, we have made significant progress on the proposed budget reconciliation package. I look forward to getting this done, expanding economic opportunities and helping everyday families get ahead.” Joe Manchin’s tweet was equally gross: “President Biden’s framework is the product of months of negotiations and input from all members of the Democratic Party who share a common goal to deliver for the American people.”

Whether this cynical move will be enough for voters to forget what these two have actually done to hurt the American people remains to be seen for someone like Sinema, who seems to believe she just needs big corporate donors to float her into a cushy Senate gig until she is ready to run for president. Joe Manchin is a corrupt scumbag in a state that is hellbent on voting bankrupt human beings like Joe Manchin into office.

It’s a tale of two politicians with very unpopular, anti-American attitudes and actions:

Make some calls.

A reminder of how we got to where we are.

Maybe the most to-the-point for Sinema:

Joe Manchin is much more transparent. I mean, he’s painfully transparent in his dirtbaggery.

A very nice reminder of Sinema’s Halloween playdate with fellow tool Mitt Romney.

And something most of us will never forget.

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President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attempted by the force of will Thursday to shake something loose and advance both the president’s Build Back Better agenda and the bipartisan infrastructure bill the Senate has already passed. The problem is, they didn’t loop the Senate in on the plan, and the usual suspects—Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema—not only didn’t help, they hurt the effort.

Biden and Pelosi were pushing for the House to do anything, and by anything they meant breaking the long-standing agreement with Biden, Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to move the bipartisan bill on hard infrastructure simultaneously with the big budget reconciliation bill containing Biden’s climate and human infrastructure agenda. They were trying to get House progressives to relent and just pass the hard infrastructure bill so that Biden could leave on his trip to Rome and then to Glasgow for the global climate summit with a “win.” Never mind that the win would be a fossil fuel-heavy roads construction bill, not exactly the best tool to use to convince other countries to reduce their carbon emissions.

Biden was unable to assure the House members that he had Sinema and Manchin on board with the Build Back Better framework he was presenting. For their part, they each refused to do the one simple thing that would have convinced progressives in the House and Senate: Say “yes.”

Sinema released a statement simply saying “we have made significant progress,” and “I look forward to getting this done.” Manchin was Manchin.

The most anyone could get him to say was, “This is all in the hands of the house right now, I’ve worked in good faith and I look forward to continuing to work in good faith and that is all I have to say today.“ It appears that neither of them see any need to do more.
 

The glaring fact—increasingly recognized even by traditional media—is that these two are the blockage. They’ve negotiated the larger package down and down and down further (community college, prescription drug prices, and paid family leave are all out as of now) and yet still pointedly refuse to say they will vote with the rest of their fellow Democrats to get this done. It’s not progressives who are blocking this.

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In fact, after a Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) meeting that followed the Biden/Pelosi full caucus meeting, chair of the caucus Rep. Pramila Jayapal released a statement announcing: “just overwhelmingly voted to endorse, in principle, the entire Build Back Better Act framework announced by President Biden today. We appreciate the President’s leadership and his commitment to getting this process over the finish line.” She said that Biden had “reaffirmed, as our Caucus has month after month, that both the infrastructure bill and the popular Build Back Better Act must move together because they are part of the same agenda,” and that the CPC was “reiterating our enthusiastic commitment to delivering that entire agenda to people across America.”

“There is too much at stake for working families and our communities to settle for something that can be later misunderstood, amended or abandoned altogether,” Jayapal continued. “That is why dozens of our members insist on keeping both bills linked and cannot vote only for one until they can be voted on altogether.”

While the bill was whittled down substantially, what remains in it is very good. It extends the expanded child tax credit for another year (instead of the four originally planned); provides universal pre-K for the next six years; provides assistance for families of four earning less than $300,000/year for child care, assuring they won’t need to pay more than 7% of their income for care of children under 6 years old; continues the premium assistance included in the COVID-19 relief bill for people buying insurance on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces through 2025; adds subsidies for the 2 million people in the Medicaid gap in nonexpansion states to get insurance through the ACA; expands Medicare with hearing benefits (vision and dental are out as of now); and provides funding for home care for elderly and disabled people.

The bulk of the spending in the bill, $550 billion of it, goes to fighting climate change. That includes tax credits for clean energy production and the manufacture of clean energy technology components. It increases tax credits for the purchase of electric cars and clean technology like solar panels, as well as their manufacture. The original mix of carrots (tax credits and grants) and sticks (fines and penalties for delaying the transition to clean energy production) is pretty much all carrots now. However—and this is fairly big—the legislative text the House drew up based on Biden’s framework includes a fee for oil and gas operators per metric ton of released methane. It also includes the sweetener of $775 million in grants, rebates, and loans to oil and gas operators to help reduce and monitor methane emissions. Even with all that free money, Anne Bradbury, CEO of the American Exploration & Production Council, panned the proposal as “a poorly constructed natural gas tax,” so don’t expect Manchin to agree to it.

The tax plan for paying for the bill has changed as well, with the billionaire tax out and new surtaxes on high incomes in: 5% surtax on individual income above $10 million and an additional 3% on incomes above $25 million. It would establish a 15% minimum tax on corporations earning $1 billion or more, and a global minimum tax of 15% on the foreign profits of U.S. companies. It would add a 1% tax on corporate stock buybacks, and finally it provides funding for the IRS to enforce against tax cheats.

What is out as of Thursday is Medicare negotiation on prescription drugs, paid family and medical leave, and that billionaire’s tax. However, the negotiating is not done—another very good reason for progressives to continue to hang tough. Pelosi is working to revive some part of a prescription drug pricing provision that would at least allow Medicare to negotiate on drugs administered by providers—vaccines and IV drugs, for example—and would cap out-of-pocket drug expenditures for people on Medicare. Drug makers with prices that increase faster than the rate of inflation would be penalized in both Medicare and the employer-sponsored insurance markets.

In a call with Senate Democrats Thursday afternoon, Schumer told his members that they can still get things either in or out of the reconciliation bill for the next week. Is that going to do the trick with the troublesome two? Probably not. Their incentives to keep obstructing are significant.

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Now that a man who openly bragged about sexually forcing himself on women has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, violent and abusive behavior has become standard fare for Republican candidates who, in some cases, hold the fate of the party’s future in their hands.

Former football star Herschel Walker, who this week secured the support of the GOP establishment for his Georgia Senate bid, is chief among them. Walker, who publicly disclosed struggling with multiple personalities, has left a trail of women alleging that he violently threatened them. Walker’s ex-wife, who was granted a protective order against him in 2005, told ABC News in 2008 that Walker pointed a pistol at her head and said, “I’m going to blow your fucking brains out.” Similarly, ex-girlfriend Myka Dean told police in 2012 that Walker threatened to “blow her head off” after she tried to end their relationship.

As Walker’s GOP primary opponent Gary Black said in a statement: “Herschel has threatened women, choked them, stalked them. … He has put knives to their throats and guns to their heads, and he claims that he must be innocent because he never went to jail.”

But in what once would have been a shocking turn, Walker is no exception to the GOP rule. Instead, he is now a run-of-the-mill Republican candidate. As the Washington Post notes, the GOP slate is riddled with men who have unseemly and sometimes damning biographies.  

Sean Parnell, an Army vet and Trump endorsee, is running for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania. According to the Post, Parnell is in the middle of a contentious divorce from his wife, who once called 911 during an argument with him and “filed two protection-from-abuse orders” against him. Parnell and his wife are presently engaged in a bitter custody battle over their three children, and Parnell could conceivably be stripped of custody amid his Senate bid. Parnell also sought to bottle up his history with a gag order, but a judge recently denied the bulk of his request.

Eric Greitens, who is running for Missouri’s open Senate seat (likely a lock for Republicans), became the state’s former disgraced governor in 2018 when he resigned over a salacious sex scandal involving a woman who said he tied her up and then blackmailed her into staying quiet by threatening to make a nude photo of her public. Trump has not endorsed a favorite in the race yet, but Greitens has more name recognition than any other GOP candidate.

“The Republican establishment doesn’t want Greitens to win the nomination,” writes the Post. But come on, they’ve already cleared the Georgia field for Herschel Walker. It’s not like Greitens is the difference between shame and glory at this point.

Josh Mandel, former state treasurer of Ohio, is in a bruising fight to be the GOP’s Senate nominee. His campaign has also admitted that he’s dating a campaign subordinate who serves as his finance director. According to the Columbus Dispatch, their relationship has fomented internal conflict in the campaign, with several fundraisers quitting this summer over what they called a toxic and abusive work environment.

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Oklahoma has a long and horrendous history when it comes to lethal injections of its death row inmates. The latest incident is extraordinarily alarming. 

On Thursday, as John Marion Grant, 60, was strapped to an execution gurney and the first dose of the sedative midazolam began to course through his veins, his body started to convulse, and then he began to vomit. Members of the execution team cleaned him up, but according to Associated Press, before raising the curtain for witnesses to view the execution, Grant could be heard yelling, profanities, and, “Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!” 

AP reporter Sean Murphy observed Grant’s execution at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. Murphy says Grant’s body jerked nearly two dozen times before he began to throw up.

Grant was declared unconscious about 15 minutes after the first drug was delivered, and died about six minutes later at 4:21 PM. 

Robert Dunham, executive director of the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center, told AP that Grant’s reaction to the drugs was rare. “I’ve never heard of or seen that.” He described it as “notable and unusual.”

Grant was the first person to be executed since Oklahoma’s five-year moratorium on executions after several botched lethal injections in 2014 and 2015. In one case, an inmate was executed with an unapproved drug and in another case, just prior to an inmate being led into the death chamber, prison officials realized they were about to use the same drug for his execution. 

Grant was convicted of murdering prison guard Gay Carter on Nov. 13, 1998, when he stabbed her 16 times with a handmade knife. Grant was originally serving sentences for robbery and illegal firearm charges. 

On Tuesday, Oklahoma announced it would reinstitute the death sentence after the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-3 decision, lifted stays of execution applying to Grant and another death row inmate, Julius Jones, by the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“The Department of Corrections has addressed concerns regarding carrying out the death penalty and is prepared to follow the will of the people of Oklahoma, as expressed in state statute, and the orders of the courts by carrying out the execution of inmates sentenced to death by a jury of their peers,” Director Scott Crow said in a statement.

A Pew research study found that even though most Americans understand that the death penalty is unfair and that it likely does not deter crime, 60% of adults in the U.S. are in favor of the death penalty in cases of murder. 

According to Equal Justice Initiative, “of the 13 people executed by the Trump administration, nine were people of color. More than half of the 50 people currently under a federal death sentence are people of color: 21 (42%) are Black and 7 (14%) are Latino.”

Oklahoma was the first jurisdiction globally to institute lethal injection as a method of execution, and it has the third-largest number of convicts in the U.S., following Texas and Virginia. 

“Today, the Department of Corrections carried out the law of the State of Oklahoma and delivered justice to Gay Carter’s family,” Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt said. 

Dunham blasted Grant’s execution and Oklahoma’s death row in an official statement. 

“Oklahoma had botched its last three execution attempts before its six-year execution pause, but apparently learned nothing from that experience. But to say this is another botched Oklahoma execution would be inadequate. Oklahoma knew full well that this was well within the realm of possible outcomes in a midazolam execution. It didn’t care … and the Supreme Court apparently didn’t either,” Dunham wrote. 

“Executions like this provide death-penalty opponents with further evidence that states who are in a rush to kill simply cannot be trusted with the death penalty. And the Supreme Court’s appalling intervention to ensure the execution would occur without meaningful judicial review further undermines the legitimacy of the Court and any pretense that it is still a neutral arbiter of the law,” Dunham added.

Grant’s request for clemency was denied twice by the state’s Pardon and Parole Board, including a 2-3 vote this month. 

“John Grant took full responsibility for the murder of Gay Carter, and he spent his years on death row trying to understand and atone for his actions more than any other client I have worked with,” Grant’s attorney, Sarah Jernigan, said in a statement.

“However we must not forget Oklahoma’s hand in this tragic story. When John stole to feed and clothe himself and his siblings, Oklahoma labeled him a delinquent instead of a desperate and traumatized child left to fend for himself. John wasn’t even a teenager yet when Oklahoma sent him to the first of several state-run youth detention facilities,” she wrote.

“Oklahoma ultimately dumped John onto the streets with no skills and no support for the mental illness that was exacerbated by years of being both the victim of and witness to beatings, rapes, and extended periods of solitary confinement, amongst other abuses. When he committed a robbery at age seventeen, Oklahoma sent him to an adult prison, subjecting him to further victimization, as later documented in a class-action lawsuit.”

Grant’s execution was denounced by Rev. Paul S. Coakley, archbishop of Oklahoma City. 

“The unnecessary rush to restart executions in Oklahoma by the governor and attorney general is concerning and disappointing. Throughout our nation’s history we have justified the killing or mistreatment of our neighbors by lessoning their value as human beings – whether it is the unborn, aged, native populations, African Americans or those imprisoned.

“All human life is sacred. No matter how serious the crime committed, we do not forfeit the inherent dignity bestowed upon us by our Creator. There are other ways to administer just punishment without resorting to lethal measures,” Coakley wrote in part. 

Jones is scheduled to be executed on Nov. 18. He has a clemency hearing before the Pardon and Parole Board on Nov. 1.

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Thursday, the Justice Department reached a settlement with survivors and families of victims in the 2015 shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The agreement allows for families of victims to receive between $6 million and $7.5 million, while survivors will receive $5 million. Fourteen plaintiffs were part of the lawsuit, all of whom claimed that failures with the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Checks System allowed convicted shooter Dylann Roof to purchase the gun he used in the massacre.

The FBI agreed and James Comey, who was the agency’s director at the time, promised that the FBI would “get better.” 

“We are all sick this happened,” Comey said in 2015. “We wish we could turn back time.” While Comey claimed the FBI changed how examiners conduct background checks, the loophole that Roof was able to exploit remains in place.

Known as a “default proceed” sale, the loophole allows gun stores to close a sale with a customer if the FBI’s background check system takes longer than three business days to process. It is still a federal law and became known colloquially as the “Charleston loophole” following the shooting.

In Roof’s case, an FBI examiner assigned to look into his background check was unable to definitively confirm further information about a drug charge he faced. He was arrested in Lexington County, South Carolina but the examiner never heard back from the county prosecutor. The sheriff’s office told the examiner to contact the Columbia police but the examiner accidentally dialed up the West Columbia police department, who had no records pertaining to the charge.

Had the examiner received more information, especially pertaining to Roof’s drug use, he would have been unable to purchase the gun. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which allowed the lawsuits from Emanuel AME Church victims’ families and survivors to go forward, agreed. “There is no dispute that the information in this report would have been sufficient to establish that Roof was an unlawful user of a controlled substance who could not lawfully possess a firearm,” the court noted in a ruling.

Had Roof failed to obtain the gun from the West Columbia dealer, he still could’ve found a way to legally buy one. South Carolina law allows private gun sales to occur without any background checks necessary. None of these laws have changed since the tragedy at Emanuel AME. Demand that lawmakers pass background check legislation that can help put an end to mass shootings. Make sure nothing stands in Congress’ way from passing sensible gun reform by signing this petition urging lawmakers to put an end to the filibuster.

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There are few people who better define the modern Republican Party than John Eastman. After beginning his legal career as a clerk to Clarence Thomas, Eastman moved on to become a regular “legal adviser” on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show. He’s argued before the Supreme Court on the topics of federal spending (lost), same sex marriage (lost), abortion (lost), and immigration (lost). This, of course, cemented his reputation as a Republican constitutional expert, and he settled into the fabric of right-wing “institutes” and “think tanks” by taking prominent positions at the Federalist Society and National Organization for Marriage, the Claremont Institute, and the Public Interest Legal Foundation—a group that works 24/7 on bringing lawsuits over election results.

Eastman also lost to Kamala Harris in the 2010 race for California attorney general. Actually Eastman didn’t make it past the GOP primary, but he apparently bore enough of a grudge that in 2020, he wrote an editorial arguing that Harris, who was born in Oakland, is not a U.S. citizen because … who the hell knows. But Newsweek published it.

All of this perfectly positioned Eastman to be The Man when Donald Trump needed an adviser who could give him the best, worst advice. Because a guy who lost every case he ever argued before a conservative-dominated Supreme Court, who argued that the current vice president isn’t a U.S. citizen, and who has a job manufacturing claims of election fraud is clearly exactly who Trump needed.

Eastman produced exactly what might be expected: a plan in which Mike Pence simply didn’t count the states where Trump lost. Easy peasy fascism squeezy! And Eastman insists that it would have worked, too, if only Pence weren’t such a square. 

And now he’s going to get to explain all this to the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6.

NBC News indicates that Eastman should expect to collect his new legal document—in the the form of a subpoena—sometime next week. Finding a legitimate reason why Eastman cannot testify will be difficult; finding an illegitimate reason will be old hat for the man who lost every major case of his career.

The committee is certainly most interested in Eastman’s meetings with Trump, and in the memo he circulated through the White House providing a step by step plan for Pence to overturn the election and throw the future of the nation into what can most charitably be called “disarray.” That plan called for Pence to declare that there were “multiple slates of electors” from states including Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia; to declare that their votes were being set aside; then to simply stop counting when he got to a point where Trump was ahead. At that point, Pence was to declare Trump the “winner.”

Eastman anticipated that this would generate “howls” from Democrats, but that Republicans would be fine with it. And he even had a plan for quieting those upset Democrats by allowing the House delegations—where Republicans have a one-state advantage—to vote again under a procedure where each state’s House delegation gets a single vote. Again, Eastman expected that every Republican in every single state would go along with this scheme, handing Trump the “victory” over the voters.

The committee would also probably like to talk to Eastman about his participation in a Jan. 2 Zoom call in which he and Trump spoke with Republican state legislators in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—apparently in anticipation of getting to exercise the “stop counting when we’re ahead” scheme. 

They’d be even more interested to hear the topic of Eastman’s Jan. 5 meeting with Pence, where Eastman informed a man from Indiana that, despite what he might have heard from every single person he had consulted—including his own attorneys, a collection of actual legal scholars, and even Dan Quayle—Pence really did have the power to hand the White House to anyone he wanted. As The New York Times noted, Eastman and Trump teamed up in an attempt to pressure Pence into going along with the plan, telling him that he had the “ultimate authority” to decide which electoral votes were in and which were out.

All of which should make for some very interesting questioning when Eastman comes before the committee. 

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Lawyers scrambled to deliver briefs to the Supreme Court this week to persuade the court to overturn the Texas abortion bounty hunter law. With arguments coming Monday, Nov. 1 in separate challenges—from the Justice Department and from abortion providers in the state—the lawyers filed one set of briefs on Wednesday, with responses due on Friday. 

“Where, as here, a state enacts a blatantly unconstitutional statute, assigns enforcement authority to everyone in the world and weaponizes the state judiciary to obstruct those courts’ ability to protect constitutional rights,” lawyers for the Whole Women’s Health Center wrote in their brief, “the federal courts must be available to provide relief.”

That, of course, is exactly what the Trump Supreme Court has already said it will not do, in the unsigned one-paragraph order that came shortly after the Texas law went into effect. Because the Texas government isn’t itself enforcing the law against abortion providers, the five far-right justices who do not care about the legacy or legitimacy of the court decided that the courts can do nothing until someone—anyone—sues someone else for aiding or abetting an abortion after six weeks gestation. At that point, the person who has been sued can raise a constitutional defense. While facing down a potential judgment of $10,000 and attorneys’ fees.

Far-right lawyers designed a law to get around the courts, and Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas patted them on the backs approvingly. The court again refused to temporarily block the law when agreeing to hear these challenges.

Maybe the far-right justices will, after these briefs and arguments, reverse themselves until the Supreme Court hears and decides Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a challenge to a Mississippi abortion ban that could be official moment when Roe v. Wade is overturned. Probably it won’t. But the stakes here go well beyond reproductive rights, as Brian Fletcher, the acting solicitor general of the U.S., detailed in his brief:

S.B. 8 was designed to nullify this Court’s precedents and to shield that nullification from judicial review. So far, it has worked: The threat of a flood of S.B. 8 suits has effectively eliminated abortion in Texas at a point before many women even realize they are pregnant, denying a constitutional right the Court has recognized for half a century. Yet Texas insists that the Court must tolerate the State’s brazen attack on the supremacy of federal law because S.B. 8’s unprecedented structure leaves the federal Judiciary powerless to intervene. If Texas is right, no decision of this Court is safe. States need not comply with, or even challenge, precedents with which they disagree. They may simply outlaw the exercise of whatever constitutional rights they disfavor; disclaim enforcement by state officials; and delegate the State’s enforcement authority to members of the general public by empowering and incentivizing them to bring a multitude of harassing actions threatening ruinous liability—or, at a minimum, prohibitive litigation costs. On Texas’s telling, no one could sue to stop the resulting nullification of the Constitution. 

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton barely bothered to respond, filing the same brief to respond to both cases and repeating the argument that since Texas itself is not enforcing the law, it is merely deputizing every angry ex-boyfriend and every clinic protester and everyone who wants $10,000 to do so. Why would he change what has worked so far with this court, with Federalist Society justices accepting the way Federalist Society lawyers designed the law to evade scrutiny?

This is an extremist court, and reproductive rights are not the only rights in extreme danger from it. And Justice Breyer, age 83 years old, is still sitting there, not retiring, and insisting that the court is not a partisan institution.