Bravo @ProPublica for this well deserved Pulitzer Prize, exposing the bribery and corruption that continues to destroy the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
If you’re frustrated about what the online world has become, and you remember “the good old days” with nostalgia (rightly or wrongly), and you despair about our collective ability to find a way forward, this by @molly0xfff offers an important perspective. With reason for hope. She has become an essential voice, along with @pluralistic and Jaron Lanier.
“It’s a rogue court, a thoroughly corrupt one, one that is so far gone in its corruption that it feels free even from the practical obligation to clothe its corruption for the sake of appearances.”
In your worst nightmare, did you consider the possibility that Trump would at the last minute:
—toss out the laughable argument that it didn’t matter what crimes he had committed, it didn’t matter whether or not he was guilty, because he had been president, and presidents are allowed to break the law—they’re “immune”;
—and then, after all the lower courts had swiftly and irrefutably explained how absurd that was, (1/2)
Every day before Trump’s trial gets under way pool photographers have a quick opportunity. Trump puts on a carefully arranged face, trying to look stern and fierce. The photographs are not spontaneous or natural, and the captions should explain that.
Here is a natural, unstaged shot, for contrast (credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images):
Imagine a faraway nation with periodic elections and two political parties. One party wants to be able to harass and intimidate election officials. The other party thinks that should be a crime.
Can you imagine if a social-media platform took it upon itself to revise everyone’s posts willy-nilly? Say, to change every mention of “twitter.com” to “X.com”?
“Becoming a public company burdened Mr. Trump with the responsibility of putting shareholders’ interests first. But Trump could generally meet that obligation by obtaining approval from his board of directors. The board’s three outside members were widely seen as bowing to his wishes.
"A week after the initial public offering, the new company began using some of the almost $300 million it had raised to clear Mr. Trump’s personal debts.”