Fait Accompli, self-evident fact; for Trump himself, now a grim reality?

Question: When then President Trump learned of the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017, what did he immediately declare?

Answer: On May 17, 2017, he exclaimed, "I'm FUCKED!"  Trump broke down and cursed upon learning of the special counsel's appointment: 'This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency.'

Question: Did then President Trump accept what he instinctively knew at that time to be true?

Answer: Clearly, he did not. 

Side note: It has been more than SIX years since May 2017.

Question: What word best characterizes, in the least common denominator, how Trump has reacted to efforts to hold him accountable to the rule of law over that six years?

Answer: Obfuscation.

• noun The act or process of obfuscating, or obscuring the perception of something; the concept of concealing the meaning of a communication by making it more confusing and harder to interpret.

• noun Confusion, bewilderment, or a baffled state resulting from something obfuscated, or made more opaque and muddled with the intent to obscure information.

• noun A single instance of intentionally obscuring the meaning of something to make it more difficult to grasp.

See Firehose of Falsehoods, as previously cited in the Arizona Eagletarian. 

Question: How many lies, during his administration, did Trump publicly tell?

Answer: 

When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection.

This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.

What is especially striking is how the tsunami of untruths kept rising the longer he served as president and became increasingly unmoored from the truth.

Trump averaged about six claims a day in his first year as president, 16 claims day in his second year, 22 claims day in this third year — and 39 claims a day in his final year. Put another way, it took him 27 months to reach 10,000 claims and an additional 14 months to reach 20,000. He then exceeded the 30,000 mark less than five months later.

The only way to deal with bluster and obfuscation is to keep hammering at the facts and spelling out their implications.

FACT: Trump's cacophony is becoming increasingly unhinged, less coherent, and fortunately, corporate media which had been amplifying said auditory chaos ever since January 6, 2021, seems to be paying less attention, figuratively turning down the volume recently.

Because Trump's megaphone is rapidly losing energy, and because of increasing numbers of researchers, pundits, and politicians speaking up and speaking out against the wannabe dictator, the Arizona Eagletarian concludes Trump's self-fulfilling prophecy declared in May 2017, is now virtually a Fait Accompli. For him, a grim reality and self-evident fact. 

50 years ago today; the importance of paying attention to history

 

The historical event about which Heather Cox Richardson wrote today's Letter from an American, along with the historical record of Reagan administration and severe environmental consequences from Reagan's rollback of federal government regulation HIGHLIGHT the importance of history and significant contextual narratives like Heather has consistently provided to keep us from repeating the some now foreseeable mistakes.

In other words, just as we NOW know Reagan, as president was disastrously mistaken regarding environmental regulation, we ALSO now KNOW enough history to ensure America does NOT repeat the disastrous Trump administration.

Corporate media, skewed by the capitalist profit (and survival?) motive has thus far shirked its responsibility to keep from validating Trump and Trump's cult.

.
We have FAR AND AWAY enough insight to adequately and appropriately declare Trump will be convicted on many of the 91 criminal charges he currently faces and he will NOT be elevated to a second term as president.

The following was written by Heather Cox Richardson. On her substack and on her Facebook post, she includes NOTES with sources for the points she makes. Heather has also recently published Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America.

Fifty years ago tomorrow, on December 28, 1973, President Richard Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act into law. Declaring that Congress had determined that “various species of fish, wildlife, and plants in the United States have been rendered extinct as a consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation,” the act provided for the protection of endangered species.

Just over a decade before, in 1962, ecologist Rachel Carson had published Silent Spring, documenting how pesticides designed to eliminate insects were devastating entire ecosystems of linked organisms. The realization that human destruction of the natural world could make the planet uninhabitable spurred Congress in 1970 to create the Environmental Protection Agency. And in 1973, when Nixon called for stronger laws to protect species in danger of extinction, 194 Democrats and 160 Republicans in the House—99% of those voting—voted yes. Only four Republicans in the House voted no.

Such strong congressional support for protecting the environment signaled that a new era was at hand. While President Gerald Ford, who succeeded Nixon, tended to dial back environmental protections when he could in order to promote the development of oil and gas resources, President Jimmy Carter pressed the protection of the environment when he took office in 1977.

In 1978, Carter placed 56 million acres of land in Alaska under federal protection as national monuments, doubling the size of the national park system. “These areas contain resources of unequaled scientific, historic and cultural value, and include some of the most spectacular scenery and wildlife in the world,” he said. In 1979 he had 32 solar panels installed at the White House to help heat the water for the building and demonstrate that it was possible to curb U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. Just before he left office, Carter signed into law the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, protecting more than 100 million acres in Alaska, including additional protections for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Oil companies, mining companies, timber companies, the cattle industry, and local officials eager for development strongly opposed Carter’s moves to protect the environment. In Alaska, local activists deliberately broke the regulations in the newly protected places, portraying Carter as King George III—against whom the American colonists revolted in 1776—and insisting that the protection of lands violated the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness promised in the Declaration of Independence.

For the most part, though, opposition to federal protection of the environment showed up as a drive to reform government regulations that, opponents argued, gave far too much power to unelected bureaucrats. In environmental regulations, the federal government’s protection of the public good ran smack into economic development.

In their 1980 presidential platform, Republicans claimed to be committed to “the conservation and wise management of America’s renewable natural resources” and said the government must protect public health. But they were not convinced that current laws and regulations provided benefits that justified their costs. “Too often,” they said, “current regulations are…rigid and narrow,” and they “strongly affirm[ed] that environmental protection must not become a cover for a ‘no-growth’ policy and a shrinking economy.”

In his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan explained that he wanted to see the U.S. produce more energy to fuel “growth and productivity. Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our shores, untouched because the present Administration seems to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and controls than more energy.”

In his farewell address after voters elected Reagan, Carter urged Americans to “protect the quality of this world within which we live…. There are real and growing dangers to our simple and our most precious possessions: the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land which sustains us,” he warned. “The rapid depletion of irreplaceable minerals, the erosion of topsoil, the destruction of beauty, the blight of pollution, the demands of increasing billions of people, all combine to create problems which are easy to observe and predict, but difficult to resolve. If we do not act, the world of the year 2000 will be much less able to sustain life than it is now.”

“But,” Carter added, “[a]cknowledging the physical realities of our planet does not mean a dismal future of endless sacrifice. In fact, acknowledging these realities is the first step in dealing with them. We can meet the resource problems of the world—water, food, minerals, farmlands, forests, overpopulation, pollution if we tackle them with courage and foresight.”

Reagan began by appointing pro-industry officials James G. Watt and Anne M. Gorsuch (mother of Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch) as secretary of the interior and administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively; they set out to gut government regulation of the environment by slashing budgets and firing staff. But both resigned under scandal in 1983, and their replacements satisfied neither those who wanted to return to the practices of the Carter years nor those who wanted to get rid of those practices altogether.

Still, with their focus on developing oil and gas, when workers repairing the White House roof removed the solar panels in 1986, Reagan administration officials declined to reinstall them.

Forty years later, we are reaping the fruits of that shift away from the atmosphere that gave us the Endangered Species Act and toward a focus on developing fossil fuels. On November 30 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), an agency of the United Nations, reported that global temperatures in 2023 were at record highs both on land and in the seas, Antarctic sea ice extent is at a record low, and devastating fires, floods, outbreaks of disease, and searing heat waves have pounded human communities this year.

The WMO released this provisional report the same day that the U.N. Climate Change negotiations, known as COP28, began in the United Arab Emirates. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged leaders to commit to act to address climate change, while there was still time to avoid “the worst of climate chaos.” After a year in which countries staggered under extreme weather events, climate change is on people’s minds: nearly 80,000 people, including world leaders and celebrities, registered to attend COP28.

After the convention ended on December 13, Umair Irfan of Vox summarized the agreement hashed out there. For the first time in 27 such conventions, countries explicitly called for the phasing out of fossil fuel…but they didn’t say when or by how much. After taking stock of what countries are doing to address climate change, the meeting concluded that efforts to reduce emissions, invest in technology, adapt to warming, and help suffering countries are all falling short.

In addition to acknowledging the need to move away from fossil fuels, COP28 agreed to cut methane, boost renewable energy considerably, and help countries that are dealing with the fallout from climate change: island nations, for example. But emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise, and the hope of limiting warmer temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius now seems a long shot. Still, renewable energy capacity grew nearly 10% in 2022, led by solar and wind power.

Today President Joe Biden used the anniversary of the Endangered Species Act to reclaim the spirit of the era in which it was written, urging Americans to protect ecosystems and biodiversity, “honor all the progress we have made toward protecting endangered species,” and to “come together to conserve our planet.” He noted that thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden-Harris administration has been able to invest billions of dollars in forest management, ecosystem restoration, and protection of watersheds, as well as making historic investments in addressing climate change, and that, as president, he has protected more lands and waters than any president since John F. Kennedy.

And yet the forces that undermined that spirit are still at work. In the 2022 West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency decision, the Supreme Court claimed that Congress could not delegate “major questions” to executive agencies, thus limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate the emissions that create climate change; and House Republicans this summer held a hearing on “the destructive cost of the Endangered Species Act,” claiming that it “has been misused and misapplied for the past 50 years” with “disastrous effects on local economies and businesses throughout the United States.” Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources Bruce Westerman (R-AR) accused the Biden administration of stifling “everything from forest management to future energy production through burdensome ESA regulations.”

While in 1980 voters could react to such a contrast between the parties’ environmental visions ideologically, in 2023, reality itself is weighing in. Brady Dennis of the Washington Post noted today that in this era of rising waters and epic storms, North Carolina has become the fourth state, along with South Carolina, New York, and New Jersey, to require home sellers to disclose their home’s flooding history and flood risk to prospective buyers.

Nevertheless, America's DEMOCRACY is AWAKENING.

Leading POLITICAL indicator?

THIS simple phenomenon tells you immediately what the public opinion polling industry cannot. It is NOT a Leading ECONOMIC Indicator. Instead, it is a Leading POLITICAL Indicator, perhaps more tangible than what any poll reports.  From Washington Post's BOOK CLUB email this morning:

“Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning” went on sale Tuesday and immediately sold out. *

[Liz] Cheney, who was censured by the Republican National Committee in 2022 for refusing to drink the fascist-flavored Kool-Aid, has been promoting her book across the country.

****

Now, do YOU, dear READER, honestly believe the American Electorate is going to be lulled to sleep by ANYTHING the former president stupidly says, or by what the DO NOTHING Congress led by insurrectionist Mike Johnson might do or not do?

My hunch: NOT on your effing life.

****

* I purchased the Kindle version (saves space in my home, and easy to read on my PC)

Take up the oxygen talking about the reality you want! Speak it into being

 It DOES work! You can make it happen. Insist on reality. 

Democracy IS Awakening.

Hadley Duvall is everybody's daughter, niece, and sister

Trauma, in general, is ubiquitous. Hadley Duvall's trauma was specific (the Washington Post link is a gift article, I subscribe). [Note, her arm injury was the result of an athletic incident]

MIDWAY, Ky. — One month before the governor thanked her for his victory, Hadley Duvall had already won.

Standing in the middle of a football field in mid-October, she looked out at the students of her small Christian university, stunned to be the one wearing the rhinestone tiara. Her classmates could have chosen to honor the student body president or a leading member of the local Bible study. Instead, they’d picked Hadley, the face of a viral ad about abortion and sexual abuse that had begun airing a month earlier, and would soon help Democrats hold the governor’s mansion in one of the most conservative states in the country.

“They don’t hate me,” Duvall, 21, recalled thinking as she accepted a bouquet of red roses from her college president. “They made me homecoming queen.”

By the night of the football game at Midway University, pretty much everyone sitting on the bleachers knew the secret Duvall had kept for 10 years: She’d been raped throughout childhood by her stepfather, who pleaded guilty to rape, sodomy and sexual abuse, and is now serving 20 years in prison. He started sexually abusing her when she was 5 years old, according to police reports — at first convincing her that his behavior was normal, then holding her down when she finally realized it was not.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection campaign learned about Duvall because of a Facebook post about her experience she had written on June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The ruling triggered a near-total abortion ban in Kentucky, one of 12 states with a recently enacted ban that makes no exceptions for rape or incest. Days after she heard from Beshear’s team, Duvall was sitting in the dining room of a wealthy Beshear supporter she didn’t know, staring into a video camera. She aimed her words directly at the Republican candidate for governor, who for months had thrown his full support behind the current version of Kentucky’s law before conceding late in the campaign that he was open to additional exceptions.

“This is to you, Daniel Cameron,” Duvall said in the ad, her blue eyes narrowed in anger.

“To tell a 12-year-old girl she must have the baby of her stepfather who raped her is unthinkable. I’m speaking out because women and girls need to have options. Daniel Cameron would give us none.”

Cameron and his campaign did not respond to requests for comment, though he reacted to the ad at the time. “My heart goes out to her, and I want her to know that,” Cameron said.

Since Roe fell, voters have overwhelmingly backed abortion rights in each of the seven states where the issue has appeared directly on the ballot, including in conservative Kentucky, Kansas and, most recently, Ohio. [And IF nearly half a million registered voters so indicate on a petition, Arizona voters in 11 months will be able to validate those rights in OUR state, in the 2024 general election]

Democrats have had relatively less success translating voters’ frustrations over abortion bans into races that could oust the politicians responsible for them, or prevent the election of other antiabortion leaders. In Texas, Georgia and Florida, for example, governors who signed abortion bans were reelected by wide margins in 2022, suggesting that voters aren’t necessarily tying antiabortion policies to individual candidates, or aren’t prioritizing the issue when deciding which candidate to support.

Duvall made that connection abundantly clear for Kentucky voters last month. Her ad, viewed online over 3 million times, sparked concerned discussions [but apparently NOT any action in Congress to enshrine those rights in law?] within the Republican Party, with top national leaders acknowledging the critical role Duvall played in Beshear’s reelection.

“Go look at the ad ran against Daniel Cameron in Kentucky of the young woman who was raped when she was 12 years old by her [STEP-]father,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said on a recent podcast. The ad clearly contributed to Beshear’s win, McDaniel said, “because we won everything else down ticket in Kentucky.”

Heading into the 2024 presidential election, the resonance of Duvall’s ad offers a new playbook for Democrats, while positioning Duvall herself as a uniquely powerful messenger on abortion, capable of appealing to moderates and conservatives.

“Some people have a stereotype of someone who has to make this kind of choice,” said Duvall’s mother, Jennifer Adkins Miller. “But Hadley is in everybody’s household. She’s everybody’s daughter. She’s everybody’s niece. She’s everybody’s sister.”

Duvall has thought critically about why she, in particular, has been such a persuasive voice on the issue. She expects conservatives wouldn’t have been nearly as open to listening to a Black or Hispanic woman with the same story.

“It’s a sad reality,” she said. “White privilege … I believe that’s a thing, 100 percent.”

She said she’s been called “the all-American girl.”

A senior in college, still working through years of trauma, Duvall knows she could lose her appeal in an instant. As she rushes to class or sits in the stands at a basketball game, she can feel her classmates watching her, she said.

“I have to remember my name kind of means something now,” Duvall said. “There are people who are probably just waiting for the chance to shoot me down.”

***

Duvall was in the second grade when she first suspected something wasn’t right.

A guidance counselor visited her class to teach her and the other 8-year-olds about the parts of their bodies no one else was allowed to touch, she said. Thirteen years later, Duvall still remembers every word of the song she learned that day.

Stop! Don’t touch me there. This is my no-no square.

Her stepfather, Jeremy Whitledge, had been touching her in those places for years — first with anal penetration, then later vaginal and oral, according to police reports. But when Duvall asked him about the song that night, she said, he offered an explanation that made sense.

“Those rules are for strangers,” Duvall remembers him saying. “Not for your family.”

While Duvall’s 30-second ad includes only a vague reference to her childhood, Duvall discussed her experience in far more detail in interviews with The Washington Post, describing unrelenting sexual abuse she endured over the course of a decade.

Whitledge declined to comment for the story, according to Lisa Lamb, a spokeswoman for the Kentucky Department of Corrections.

In September 2019, Whitledge sent a letter to Miller acknowledging the abuse, writing, “Because of my weakness I failed as her father. I failed as her protector.”

At the beginning, Duvall said, Whitledge framed the sexual abuse as a punishment. When she and her brother did something wrong, she recalled, he would send them to their rooms to await whatever discipline he deemed appropriate.

“My brother would get spankings,” Duvall said. “I would get touched.”

Most of the abuse happened at night, after her mom went to sleep. He would sneak into her bedroom around midnight or 1 a.m., she said, locking the door behind him. She would try to go somewhere else in her mind — sometimes clutching an old T-shirt of her mother’s until it was over.

Duvall said she thought all the time about telling her mom, but she didn’t want to mess up what she imagined other people saw as “the perfect family.” She had parents who came to her cheerleading competitions. Christmases at her stepfather’s family cabin. A jet ski on the lake.

Her mom had struggled with drugs for years, Miller and Duvall said, but eventually became sober after a year in rehab.

“I knew there was no way my mom could do it all on her own,” Duvall said.

The pregnancy test was positive, Duvall said, but she never had to make a choice. Almost two weeks later, she said, she woke up to sharp cramps and far more blood in her underwear than she’d ever seen before. For hours, she said, she sat on the toilet while a steady stream of blood flowed into the bowl.

At the time, she just assumed her period had returned.

It would be years before she understood she’d had a miscarriage, Duvall said.

At the end of eighth grade, in May 2016, she filled out a questionnaire about her hopes and fears for high school, which she keeps in her apartment. Asked about the “biggest mistake you HOPE you DON’T make,” Duvall responded, “Get pregnant.”

Duvall decided to tell her mom about the abuse less than a year after she answered that question, texting her from school in April 2017 to say she had something important to share that night. Miller prodded her daughter for more details — “Are you in trouble? Are the police involved?” — then picked Duvall up early, too unsettled to wait for the end of the day.

Duvall broke the news in the car, both women recalled.

“Jeremy sexually abuses me,” Duvall said to her mom.

Miller slammed on the brakes and later threw up.

Over the next 24 hours, Miller said, she cleared out the bank accounts and the gun cabinet, while Duvall stayed with a friend. Soon after that, they went to the police.

That day, Duvall said she decided not to tell anyone about the pregnancy. Police records show that Duvall recounted a pregnancy scare she had at age 12, but that the test had been negative. Looking back, Duvall said she didn’t have the strength to tell a room full of male officers what had really happened.

“I wanted people to know I went through that, but I didn’t want them to know I miscarried,” Duvall said. “I wasn’t ready.”

But as the years passed, Duvall said, she started regretting that she hadn’t recounted her full story in the police station, feeling heavy with secrets she’d planned to keep forever. She told her cousin about the positive pregnancy test in late 2021, when she was 19.

“It was really hard for her [when she reported to the police], everybody bombarding her with questions,” said Chloe Adkins, Duvall’s cousin.

Telling the truth about the pregnancy was “healing in a sense,” Duvall said.

A big secret, she realized, made it harder to move on.

The day after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Duvall opened the Notes app on her phone and started to write.

She’d scrolled through over a dozen Facebook posts from friends and family celebrating the decision, growing angrier with each new Bible verse in her feed. A Christian herself, Duvall struggled to understand why they wanted to take rights away from young women and girls in vulnerable situations. If they knew the full extent of what she’d been through, she wondered, would any of them see this differently?

“The father figure in my life had planted his child in me at the age of 12,” she wrote in her draft. “Thankfully, I had my CHOICE. I never had to go through with my decision, but I would have … if you can look at a CHILD & tell them you think they should have to carry their parents child, you are sick.”

With the post still safely tucked away in Notes, Duvall thought about all the people in her life it might upset. Her boyfriend’s conservative family, whom she was eager to impress. Her mom, who still didn’t know about the pregnancy. Most of all, she said, she worried about her half sister, whom her mom put up for adoption when she got pregnant unexpectedly at 21. More than two decades later, her sister — who made contact with the family when Duvall was 13 — would sometimes post antiabortion messages online.

“What if she hates me?” Duvall remembered thinking. “What if she thinks I hate her?”

Duvall wasn’t as pro-abortion rights as some of the people she saw marching through the streets, she said. She couldn’t say when in pregnancy she thought abortion should be banned — but she thought there should be some kind of limit. More than anything, she said, she wanted people to see the issue for all its gray areas and complications.

I’m not pro-abortion,” she’d sometimes say. “I’m pro minding your own business.”

As soon as Duvall copied the draft from Notes and clicked “post” on Facebook, she said, she set her phone facedown on the other side of the room, too scared to look.

By the time Beshear’s campaign team started planning for an abortion ad focused on exceptions for rape and incest, about a year later, Duvall’s post had been shared over 3,000 times. Hundreds of commenters had called her brave. Strong. An inspiration. A few people said she’d persuaded them to change their views.

Duvall drove to the video shoot with her boyfriend one morning in mid-July, five potential outfits in the back of her car. She wasn’t getting paid for the commercial, but she’d agreed to participate as soon as the campaign asked, thinking of all the other abuse victims she’d be able to reach with her message.

On set, Beshear’s media team selected a simple navy dress, then asked for permission to airbrush the tattoo on her arm of angel wings, a tribute to Duvall’s late nephew.

David Eichenbaum, Beshear’s Washington-based media consultant, handed Duvall a script based on fragments of things she’d said, tailored to appeal to the Republicans the governor couldn’t win without. Duvall would never say the word “abortion.” Instead, she would stress the importance of “options.”

“It’s an inclusive word,” Eichenbaum said. “We’re trying to persuade people here.”

After Duvall read through the script for the first time, Eichenbaum said, the room went silent. He and the cameraman were crying. So was Duvall’s mom.

Miller said she’d heard her daughter talk like that once before — five years ago in a Kentucky courtroom, reading her victim impact statement before the sentencing as she stared down her stepfather.

Duvall didn’t let herself cry until she was lying in bed that night, hours after the filming was over. Then the feelings surfaced all at once, messy and conflicting. She felt proud of what she’d done that day, she said, but also sad.

“This is what I’m going to be known for: being raped,” she said to her boyfriend. “And that’s just that.”

***

When the ad posted online in late September, Duvall stared at her computer for the better part of three days, refreshing every few minutes as the likes and retweets climbed higher and higher. She read every individual post she could find, she said, fixating on any negative comment.

Worried about her daughter, Miller eventually called Duvall’s boyfriend.

“Take her out,” she told him. “She needs to have fun. She needs to be a college student.”

But when they arrived at their favorite dive bar, Duvall’s ad was playing on the big screen.

“What is even happening right now?” she recalled saying to her boyfriend, as the people around them started to stare.

Two months later — the election long over — the staring hasn’t stopped. If anything, Duvall said, it has intensified. Now, she’s not just the girl in the ad. She’s the girl who helped the governor win reelection.

In his acceptance speech, Beshear thanked Duvall right after his wife and kids.

“Because of her courage, this commonwealth is going to be a better place and people are going to reach out for the help they need,” he said. “Thank you, Hadley.”

Duvall has thought a lot about why her ad resonated so deeply, especially with moderates and conservatives in her Republican state. While a lot of people don’t particularly like the idea of abortion, she said, they might think differently about the issue when they’re introduced to a real person with a story like hers.

“It’s real easy to dismiss the rape and incest exceptions when they’re not right in front of your face,” Duvall said.

Ahead of the election, she decided to keep a few of her Facebook posts public — so voters could see her hugging her mom, walking her dog, wearing her homecoming sash. If her face was persuasive to people, she decided she might as well use it.

From the beginning, the Beshear campaign had warned Duvall to brace for backlash to the commercial. But sitting in the Midway student center a week after the election, Duvall told her friends she hasn’t had to deal with much.

“It’s been nothing bad,” said Duvall, lying back in a chair, pink sneakers slung over the armrest.

Duvall had just arrived back on campus with her arm in a cast after having surgery for an old athletic injury.

“I don’t even know how you hate on it, not going to lie,” one of Duvall’s friends said. “There’s not really a way to hate on it.”

“Especially when you are the male species,” Duvall said. “Like, what are you talking about? Nobody even asked you.”

“And was never, ever going to,” said Kyaria Cotton, Duvall’s best friend and former roommate.

They all laughed.

These were the moments that made Duvall feel like she could keep speaking out forever. She could become a victim advocate, fighting for other little girls abused in their bedrooms late at night. She could campaign for Democratic candidates in 2024 — and show voters across the country how abortion bans can harm young women like her.

Then a guy on the basketball team walked by.

“Hey, superstar,” he said. “Can I get your autograph?”

Duvall rolled her eyes and smiled, like she does every time this happens. But her mind was already off somewhere else, spinning up anxious thoughts. Did people think she was doing all this to get rich and famous? People were always observing her now, her face familiar across Kentucky. What if she did something embarrassing at a bar one night, she wondered, and someone caught it on video?

With a few hours to kill, Duvall and Cotton decided to walk to the local coffee shop. They bounded across the soccer field, yanking off their sweatshirts to soak in the warmth of one of the year’s last summerlike days. They talked about Duvall’s boyfriend and the day of homecoming — how Cotton knew all along that her best friend would win.

In line for coffee — a mile from campus — Duvall could have been any 21-year-old, debating which fall drink to try that day.

Then the barista recognized her.

“Which drink was hers?” the barista asked Cotton once Duvall stepped away. “I’ll cover it.”

*****

Gov. Katie Hobbs signs her name to Arizona's abortion access ballot initiative 

Dateline November 29, 2023

Seated in front of the Arizona Pioneer Women Memorial Tuesday morning, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs added her signature to a petition for a statewide ballot initiative that in November 2024 could enshrine the right to an abortion in the Arizona Constitution.

Arizona for Abortion Access, which is supported by the ACLU of Arizona, Arizona List and Planned Parenthood of Arizona, among others, spearheaded the ballot initiative, which would both expand and protect abortion rights in Arizona through a constitutional amendment.

The campaign needs to gather at least 383,923 valid signatures from Arizona voters by July 3, 2024, but the aim is to gather about double that number, organizers have said.

*****

By the way, who cares what critics say? The Arizona Constitution gives WE the PEOPLE the authority to override the critics.

Focus on the stakes, not the poll numbers

The HORSE RACE is horses**t. The STAKES are increasingly stark, important and urgent. The three paragraphs below are from an AP news story dateline in August 2023. 

Conservative [Reactionary, nay, RADICAL right-wing] groups draw up plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision

WASHINGTON (AP) — With more than a year to go before the 2024 election, a constellation of conservative organizations is preparing for a possible second White House term for Donald Trump, recruiting thousands of Americans to come to Washington on a mission to dismantle the federal government and replace it with a vision closer to his own.

Led by the long-established Heritage Foundation think tank and fueled by former Trump administration officials, the far-reaching effort is essentially a government-in-waiting for the former president’s return — or any candidate who aligns with their ideals and can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024.

With a nearly 1,000-page “Project 2025” handbook and an “army” of Americans, the idea is to have the civic infrastructure in place on Day One to commandeer, reshape and do away with what Republicans deride as the “deep state” bureaucracy, in part by firing as many as 50,000 federal workers.

*****

Demand your local news enterprises cover the STAKES and either not cover or at least deemphasize the horse race. 

And LIVE from New York... oh, wait, that's not where I am. Anyway, HAPPY THANKSGIVING. And wishing all of you who will be with your larger families, fruitful, productive and kind dialogue. 

Disqualify Trump from the ballot in 2024? Part way there

Judge Sarah B.Wallace ruled against a group of six Republican and unaffiliated voters in Colorado, represented by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who filed a lawsuit in September that sought to bar Trump from the state's Republican primary ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which disqualifies people from running for office if they've engaged in "insurrection or rebellion" against the U.S. The petitioners claimed his activity surrounding Jan. 6 invoked this "insurrectionist ban."

In a 102-page opinion, Wallace cited "competing interpretations" of the constitutional clause, and a "lack of definitive guidance in the text or historical sources" in order to rule its application to Trump.

"To be clear, part of the Court's decision is its reluctance to embrace an interpretation which would disqualify a presidential candidate without a clear, unmistakable indication that such is the intent of Section Three… Here, the record demonstrates an appreciable amount of tension between the competing interpretations, and a lack of definitive guidance in the text or historical sources. As a result, the [lower] Court holds that Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to Trump," Wallace wrote. [...]

The Trump team celebrated the Colorado judge's rejection of CREW's challenge to keep Trump off the GOP ballot in 2024 by maintaining that the efforts to invoke Section 3 of the 14th Amendment against Trump were election interference-- noting that voters' "Constitutional right" to electing Trump was preserved.

The watchdog non-profit organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington took issue with that part of the ruling.

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From CREW's opening brief filed yesterday in Colorado Supreme Court to appeal Judge Wallace's ruling.

Because the district court found that Trump engaged in insurrection [finding of fact] after taking the Presidential oath of office, it should have concluded that he is disqualified [determination of law] from office and ordered the Secretary of State to exclude him from the Colorado presidential primary ballot.

Instead, the district court ordered the Secretary to place Trump on the ballot. The court held that Section 3’s disqualification rule does not apply to insurrectionist former Presidents, nor to any insurrectionists running for President—in effect, that this office alone is above the law. To reach this result, the district court had to find, counterintuitively, that the President is not an “officer of the United States,” that the Presidency is not an “office under the United States,” and that the Presidential oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution is not an oath to support the Constitution. This holding was reversible error. The Constitution itself, historical context, and common sense, all make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification clause extends to the President and the Presidency.

The Constitution explicitly tells us, over and over, that the Presidency is an “office.” The natural meaning of “officer of the United States” is anyone who holds a federal “office.” And the natural reading of “oath to support the Constitution” includes the stronger Presidential oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” The historical record when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified also reveals an overwhelming consensus that Section 3 disqualified rebels like Jefferson Davis* from the Presidency, and that the President was an “officer of the United States.” As for common sense, there would be no reason to allow Presidents who lead an insurrection to serve again while preventing low-level government workers who act as foot soldiers from doing so. And it would defy logic to prohibit insurrectionists from holding every federal or state office except for the highest and most powerful in the land. Section 3 does not say that. The Framers did not intend that. Trump is disqualified from holding office again.

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Based on a thorough review of the evidence and assessments of witness credibility, the district court found that the January 6, 2021, attack on the United States Capitol was an insurrection against the Constitution and that Trump engaged in that insurrection.

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In the spirit of reporting the STAKES rather than the horserace, the Arizona Eagletarian believes voters will decide to maintain democratic rule rather than enable Trump's brand of "strongman" authoritarian dictatorship.

When Trump declares his intent to TERMINATE all or part of the US Constitution, believe him.

Such a declaration is fully in accord with the inflammatory rhetoric he uses in his campaign to return to power in the 2024 election. The fact check below comes from Snopes.com

* Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808 – December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the first and only president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 to 1865.

Follow and regularly check in with the Arizona Eagletarian to stay up on the STAKES for America in the 2024 presidential election.

Rosalynn Carter: A life well lived

Is any act of kindness too small?

Yesterday, while grocery shopping, I wandered down the cereal aisle and found a woman, maybe similar in age to me. She was eyeballing the store brand of oatmeal and comparing it to the name brand (Quaker) that is so popular. I spoke up and asked her if she could use a $1 off coupon for oatmeal. Another day when I was shopping at the same store, I had received the coupon at checkout. She accepted. I had no idea whether that one dollar was significant to her or not. It just occurred to me to ask.

A few minutes later, in the produce department, I spotted another person checking out pistachio nuts without shells. I had had a habit or buying them also, but recently figured out I could get a better price regularly on them at a particular website with a feature allowing for "subscriptions" for delivery on a regular basis. So, I explained the concept to that shopper. And "they" refrained from buying them at this store and probably went home and ordered them online.

These incidents may be of little consequence or impact other than in the context of Mrs. Carter's words above. This morning I realized what I had done yesterday at the grocer. Then I found out Mrs. Carter had passed this morning (AZ time).

I reflected back and became thankful for having had such wonder inducing interactions with strangers in an important place in my community. Beats the heck out of when, years ago, I looked at life differently than I do now.

I'm thankful for the life Rosalynn Carter lived in America and in service to people wherever she went.

 

Here's your NO LABELS Party

 

That you have it. The Lincoln Democracy Institute provides key insight on the UNDERLYING motivations for what Joe Lieberman and his RICH friends are doing hoping to UNDERMINE President Biden's chance in the 2024 election cycle.

In the fundamentalist Christian cult I was a part of in my early adult years, the "Teacher" had a potent saying about labels. It doesn't matter what's on the label. What matters is what's inside the container. (I paraphrased).

While Cornel West is not (at present) running as a No Labels candidate, his independent campaign nevertheless does aim to seduce Democrats voters wistfully intent on engineering the most Progressive American federal government. And then there's Robert Kennedy Jr. Oy!

The unfortunate fact is this method of splitting off voters is not new. In Arizona, competitive (where both sides have real opportunity to win) state legislative races over the last decades have had robust support from GOP interests. The GOP has dominated state lawmaking (except for ideas presented directly to voters in ballot initiatives). Those who control the state legislature knew that when they were able to get faux liberal or progressive candidates on the ballot, they dramatically increased the odds for Republicans winning those seats. In some instances, they succeeded. In like manner, the No Labels party is hoping to throw sand in the gears of the machinery of the Biden reelection campaign.

The danger in 2024 resides in whether they succeed in luring these idealists away from the administration which has done more for workers and families than any since FDR and the New Deal.

What happens if that scenario comes to fruition?

More Trump, less constrained.

It's up to each of us. Each of you, to make sure we do not return the modern day Mussolini to power.

Make sure YOU are prepared to vote. Make sure you do your best to get your friends and family to vote.

When we do this, just like in 2018, 2020, and 2022, we will win.

Personal Duress and Unparalleled Danger UPDATED 11-7-2023

A few days ago, I blogged about Cassidy Hutchinson, her escape from Trump world, and her memoir, Enough. 

Feedback I later received suggested I could have driven the point home with more vivid descriptions. 

THIS excerpt from a Special Counsel filing seeking to reinstate a gag order Judge Chutkan had put on hold a week or so ago might better show what Hutchinson, emotionally, had to deal with. On Sunday night this week, Chutkan DID re-impose the gag. Trump DID respond with plenty of hatefulness for the judge and other "enemies."

In her memoir, Hutchinson highlighted how important it was to her to have read Bob Woodward's book, The Last of the President's Men (2015), about Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman's deputy Alexander Butterfield.

Butterfield's role in the Nixon White House was very similar to Hutchinson's in the Trump administration. 

On page 107 of The Last of the President's Men,

Butterfield left the meeting at that point.

Now alone with Nixon, Haldeman, on the tape, continued, "Newbrand [a career Secret Service agent] will do anything that I tell him to... he has come to me twice and absolutely, sincerely said, 'With what you've done for me and what the president's done for me, I just want you to know if you want someone killed, if you want anything, any way, any direction...'"

Woodward, longtime journalist with the Washington Post, besides having made himself known worldwide (most famously in a book co-authored by Carl Bernstein) with books about Nixon, also wrote a poignant trilogy about Trump; Fear; Rage; and Peril. In other words, hundreds of thousands of words describing the emotional turmoil a twentysomething Hutchinson would face as she prepared to extricate herself from the Trump's inner circle. 

Anyway, Hutchinson did muster the wherewithal to admit to the House select committee investigating the J6 insurrection that she had much more to tell them about what happened on January 6, 2021 than she did in her first interviews. In essence, she had a personal epiphany. She refused to be cowed into silence when she knew so much more about what happened before, on, and after January 6. 

Last year, in October, Woodward published the Trump Tapes: 20 interviews that show why he is an unparalleled danger.

In more than 50 years of reporting, I have never disclosed the raw interviews or full transcripts of my work. But after listening again to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his last year as chief executive, I have decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded in my ears in a way the printed page cannot capture.

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Two other heroes, one a shero (Liz Cheney), the other Adam Kinzinger. On Halloween 2023, Kinzinger's memoir will be published. Both former Republican Members of Congress, they served with Democrats on the Select Committee to investigate the January 6, 2021 insurrection. I admire every member of the committee, but especially Kinzinger and Cheney. Each demonstrated moral integrity and courage unparalleled among their colleagues in the House Republican Conference. They stared down immense from levels of duress to do what they did. 

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UPDATED to include a clip from a Charlie Sykes interview with Cassidy Hutchinson

   

How Cassidy Hutchinson escaped the cult -- she had had ENOUGH

 

From page 322 of Enough, Hutchinson's fascinating memoir, as she was questioned by Liz Cheney, co-chair of the Select Committee investigating January 6,

"Let's turn now to what happened in the president's vehicle when the Secret Service told him he would not be going to the Capitol after his speech."

I've prepared for the question. I understand the effect my answer will have. I'm ready, even though I had been in a panic in the holding room about this moment, fearing I would screw it up, and dreading, too, the thought of hurting people I care about. I remember that when Tony [Ornato] was describing what had happened, that old rationalization excusing Trump's bad behavior was playing in the back of my mind: Why had people let it go so far? Until I shared this information with the committee, I hadn't told anyone else about it except for giving Mark [Meadows] and, later, Stefan [Passantino, Hutchinson's Trump World attorney] an abbreviated version. It had taken me three or four attempts to tell Jody [Hunt with Alston & Bird her attorney after cutting ties with Passantino]

Early on in Hutchinson's recollection of her life and experience in the Trump administration, she gives clues on her allegiance to Republican politics, including from her early childhood days. However, she drops more, subtle, clues to her independent mindset which defined her willingness to look beyond what had to be overwhelming peer pressure to betray genuinely American patriotic ideals.  How could she continue to favor an ill-suited narcissist who she finally realized was destroying democracy and the constitutional order?

A (recent) Evening with historian Heather Cox Richardson

Heather is a KEY voice for democracy in America today. More importantly, she is like an hour glass letting the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom of more than a century and half of the American experience drip steadily onto the insatiably thirsty for knowledge ears, eyes, and awakening minds of millions of Americans.

If you're pressed for time, I recommend listening to this entire discussion at 1.5x speed. Still slow enough to absorb the entire message, yet at the same time, redeeming some of YOUR time (kinda like what California Congresswoman Katie Porter does when grilling petulant CEOs to force them to be honest about your rights and mine).

If you simply want a quick overview and encapsulation of the whys and hows of Heather's new book, Democracy Awakening, key in from the 19:00 to 22:05 mark of the video. 

The final few minutes are incredibly important too. 

Don't be mistaken or distracted or misdirected. Democracy will continue to awaken NOT because of Heather using her voice, but by YOU, and me each using OUR individual and collective voices. 

Rise UP! with One VOICE!

The Scheme, by Sheldon Whitehouse

 

The Scheme, by Sheldon Whitehouse, US Senator from Rhode Island

Sheldon Whitehouse (born October 20, 1955) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States senator from Rhode Island since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a United States Attorney from 1993 to 1998 and the 71st attorney general of Rhode Island from 1999 to 2003.

A political progressive and climate hawk, Whitehouse became chair of the United States Senate Committee on the Budget in 2023. He has given hundreds of Senate floor speeches about climate change and has made his assertion that politically conservative "dark money" groups are conducting a campaign to seize control of the American government, specifically the Supreme Court of the United States, a hallmark of his Senate tenure.

CREW lawsuit to disqualify Trump from Colorado 2024 ballot remains alive

 

Having disqualified himself from public office by violating Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, Donald Trump must be removed from the ballot, according to a lawsuit filed today by six Republican and unaffiliated Colorado voters including former state, federal and local officials, represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the firms Tierney Lawrence Stiles LLC, KBN Law, LLC and Olson Grimsley Kawanabe Hinchcliff & Murray LLC.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, also known as the Disqualification Clause, bars any person from holding federal or state office who took an “oath…to support the Constitution of the United States” and then has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump stood before the nation and took an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” After losing the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump violated that oath by recruiting, inciting and encouraging a violent mob that attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021 in a futile attempt to remain in office.

Now, from CNN:

CNN — Former President Donald Trump has lost the first of several attempts to throw out a lawsuit that seeks to block him from the 2024 presidential ballot in Colorado, based on the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against insurrectionists holding public office.

Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace this week rejected Trump’s bid to get the lawsuit dismissed on free-speech grounds.

The former president still has several pending challenges against the case, which was initiated by a liberal government watchdog group.

A trial to determine Trump’s eligibility is set for October 30, if the case reaches that stage. Colorado election officials say there’s a “hard deadline” to resolve the dispute before January 5, when the ballot printing process begins for the March 5 Republican primary.

In a 22-page ruling, Wallace said she wasn’t swayed by Trump’s argument that the lawsuit seeks to improperly restrict his rights to participate in the political process.

“The Court has no difficulty concluding that it is to the benefit of the general public that, regardless of political affiliation, only constitutionally qualified candidates are placed on the ballot,” Wallace wrote.

She added that resolving the question of Trump’s eligibility is particularly important because he is seeking “the highest office in the country” and “the disqualification sought is based on allegations of insurrection against the very government over which the candidate seeks to preside.”

Unprecedented cases

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, filed the Colorado lawsuit on behalf of a group of Republican and unaffiliated voters in the state. This is one of three major challenges against Trump’s eligibility for the 2024 ballot – similar cases are pending in Minnesota and Michigan, where a different group filed lawsuits.

CREW’s chief counsel Donald Sherman said in a statement that the group is “pleased with the Court’s well-reasoned and very detailed order, leading to a thorough decision, and look forward to presenting our clients’ case at trial.”

The group sued Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who oversees elections in the state. Griswold, a Democrat, previously told the judge that she doesn’t have a position on Trump’s eligibility and would comply with the judge’s final decision.

However, Griswold has said in court filings that she “believes that Mr. Trump incited the insurrection” and therefore wants the judge to determine if the 14th Amendment’s insurrectionist ban can be applied through Colorado state law, because she has “sworn a solemn oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution and to effectuate its requirements.”

Wouldn't THAT be loverly? 

Democracy Awakening! It's YOU (and me)

Heather Cox Richardson on Saving Democracy

In a different YouTube interview I watched last night, Heather (Cox Richardson), made an off the cuff remark about how many people will read her latest book. I take her to have meant that she is letting go of her work and sending out into the Universe.

Yes, she's a Professor, and a Ph.D., but she's also several years younger than me. I both am in awe of the degree of FLOW she has demonstrated in her "ministry" to the American people. Based on reading her Letters from an American for the last few years, I feel comfortable addressing her by her first name.

From the masterfully written FOREWORD to Democracy Awakening, which I believe to be the most important book/history/message of our moment in US history:

The concept that humans have the right to determine their own fate remains as true today as it was when the Founders put that statement into the Declaration of Independence, a statement so radical that even they did not understand its full implications. It is as true today as it was when FDR and the United States stood firm on it. With today’s increasingly connected global world, that concept is even more important now than it was when our Founders declared that no one had an inherent right to rule over anyone else, that we are all created equal, and that we have a right to consent to our government.

This is a book about how a small group of people have tried to make us believe that our fundamental principles aren’t true. They have made war on American democracy by using language that served their interests, then led us toward authoritarianism by creating a disaffected population and promising to re-create an imagined past where those people could feel important again. As they took control, they falsely claimed they were following the nation’s true and natural laws. This book is also the story of how democracy has persisted throughout our history despite the many attempts to undermine it. It is the story of the American people, especially those whom the powerful have tried to marginalize, who first backed the idea of equality and a government that defended it, and then, throughout history, have fought to expand that definition to create a government that can, once and for all, finally make it real.

Richardson, Heather Cox. Democracy Awakening. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Our fundamental (or Founding) principles ARE true. We can and we MUST each do the right thing, day after day. That is, to exercise our citizenship responsibilities. As we do so, our right to self-determination in the government of our country will survive.

Criminal defendant Trump makes statements that cause violence

Special Prosecutor Jack Smith has asked Judge Tanya Chutken to issue a LIMITED gag order in the criminal case she must oversee with criminal defendant Donald Trump.

In an interview with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC on September 15, 2016, Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) defined a particular problem.

THE problem, which MSNBC sadly edited out of recordings posted to its website, is that Donald Trump makes statements that cause violence.

However, nobody is trying to keep Trump quiet. EVERYBODY knows that would be an impossible task anyway. In the clip below, O'Donnell reads excerpts from Jack Smith's motion to clarify that point.

Criminal defendant Trump, yet running for re-election after having already once lost massively, will STILL be allowed to declare HIS INNOCENCE of the charges (in any/all of the 91 charges currently pending against him) in four different jurisdictions, even in the face of such a gag order. 

But should he be allowed to yell "FIRE" in a crowded auditorium? Or able to freely propagate what some characterize as the Trump Contagion?

I'm confident criminal defendant Trump has neither read, nor taken to heart, the Power Principles in Dacher Keltner's book/on Power Paradox, such as : The experience of power [not only corrupts, but also] destroys the skills that gained us power in the first place. Keltner, Dacher. The Power Paradox (p. 100). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. .

I'm also confident criminal defendant Trump is massively off his rocker. That's the technically accurate medical terminology, right?

Nevertheless, I also have ample confidence that when it's all said and done, our Republic will remain.

Why? Because of the steadfast exercise of our citizenship responsibilities and, that just like in 2020 and 2022, our institutions will hold firm. And they WILL hold firm as we resist Trump and PERSIST in resolutely steadfast defiance of his Fascism.

It has now been more than two and a half years since the fateful day of infamy which criminal defendant Trump instigated January 6, 2021. Did not many of us worry over what appeared to be Attorney General Merrick Garland's inaction on the matter. Yet, Garland, in due time, appointed Jack Smith to head the investigation/prosecution. Related matters have subsequently proceeded apace and with all due diligence.

I am hopeful. I am confident. We are in this together and we'll get through it together. 

Keeping Trump off the ballot

 

Noah Bookbinder, president of CREW, on CNN

MSNBC's Ali Velshi interviews Harvard Law Professor emeritus Laurence Tribe on September 10, 2023

American legal scholar Laurence Tribe joins Ali Velshi to discuss the unique strength of a new lawsuit in Colorado seeking to ban Trump from the ballot based on the 14th Amendment, 

why the case is destined to end up at the Supreme Court, 

and how the self-executing component of the article works. 

“This is more controversial because it isn’t as mechanical,” Tribe explains about the lawsuit. 

“Clearly we’re going to have to explore in this trial the meaning of insurrection, what it means to be engaged in it… 

and I think it’s clear to most people that if Trump doesn’t qualify [for that], nobody would.” 

On what's at stake in the 14th Amendment clause, Tribe says, “This was a major protective provision put in there because [the founders] realized that those who take an oath to uphold the constitution and then turncoat against it might not end up being prosecuted for anything,” he explains. 

“It’s important for the survival of the republic that someone who has shown him or herself to be an insurrectionist against the Constitution not get another chance to try.”

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold interviewed by Ali Velshi

"Trump is a liar with no respect for the Constitution. To say that a section of the 14th Amendment is election interference in considering how to uphold the Constitution is election interference is UNAMERICAN. -- Jena Griswold, Colorado Secretary of State

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World History already has demonstrated the unique salience and urgency of this current question in the courts of the State of Colorado.

The most stark examples of Fascistic chaos, ironically initiated from benign forms of government, rather than armed revolt, from the last hundred years are Mussolini and Hitler. 

Both of them promised economic prosperity but are remembered by history for death and destruction.

On 31 October 1922, following the March on Rome (28–30 October), Mussolini was appointed prime minister by King Victor Emmanuel III, becoming the youngest individual to hold the office up to that time. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labour strikes,[10] Mussolini and his followers consolidated power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship. Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and illegal means and aspired to create a totalitarian state.

By November 1932, the Nazi Party held the most seats in the Reichstag but did not have a majority. None of the political parties were able to form a majority coalition in support of a candidate for chancellor. Former chancellor Franz von Papen and other conservative leaders persuaded President Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor on 30 January 1933. Shortly after, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act of 1933 which began the process of transforming the Weimar Republic into Nazi Germany, a one-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. On 2 August 1934, Hindenburg died and Hitler succeeded him as the head of state and government. Hitler aimed to eliminate Jews from Germany and establish a New Order to counter what he saw as the injustice of the post-World War I international order dominated by Britain and France.

If the United States allows Trump to regain the power of the presidency, there can be no doubt our history will be likewise tainted. He has already articulated his contempt for the US Constitution. 

When they tell you who they are, believe them.