It's Been a Busy Year for the Supreme Court

In the past week, the Supreme Court has handed down decisions on Affirmative Action, religious rights of "artists," and student loan cancellations. We discussed these on Saturday. But it has also handed down many other decisions this term. Either there were no blockbusters like last year's Dobbs decision, or there were so many blockbusters this year that none of them stood out above all the others. Here is a brief summary of the biggest ones. It is hard to group them by subject since almost each one is unique, so they are in chronological order:

• May 11: Prosecution of corruption: Here the Court restricted the ability of federal prosecutors to pursue corruption cases. A former aide to former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, Joseph Percoco, was convicted of requesting and accepting a $315,000 bribe from a construction company. The case hinged on the fact that at the time he took the bribe, Percoco was no longer in government but was working for Cuomo's election campaign. Thus, in theory, he had no official ability to help the company and thus there was no official quid pro quo. The fact that he could still whisper something in Cuomo's ear wasn't enough to uphold the conviction. The vote was 9-0.
  
  
• May 18: Social media: The families of people killed by terrorists sued Google because the site allowed militant groups to operate on YouTube and in some cases their algorithms even recommended this content. The Court ruled that Sec. 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields companies that accept user-generated content from having to vet the content. In other words, the Act says that a company like Google is more like the Postal Service (which doesn't vet letters) than The New York Times (which does vet letters) and the Court upheld this interpretation by a 9-0 vote.
  
  
• May 25: Protecting wetlands: Federal law protects wetlands but four presidential administrations have been involved in lawsuits about what a protected wetland is. In this case, Samuel Alito wrote a 5-4 decision limiting the scope of the Clean Water Act to wetlands that have a continuous connection to bodies of water. With this definition, a marsh connected to a lake is a protected wetland but a freestanding marsh is not. Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberals in the minority.
  
  
• June 1: Unions: In this case, this Court made it easier for employers to sue unions for damages. This was a blow to organized labor. Truck drivers working for a cement company mixed cement immediately before going on strike. The cement hardened, leaving it useless, and the company sued the union for the value of the cement they couldn't sell. Washington State Supreme Court dismissed the case on the grounds that it should be heard by the National Labor Relations Board. The company argued that their case belonged in state court. The decision to send the case back to state court was 8-1, with Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
  
  
• June 8: Racial gerrymanders: In a surprising decision on racial gerrymandering, the Court decided that the Alabama legislature violated the Voting Rights Act by not creating two majority-Black districts, which would have made sense geographically. The legislature was ordered to draw a new map with two majority-Black districts. John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the three liberals on this 5-4 decision.
  
  
• June 15: Native American adoptions: Federal standards state that when Native American children are put up for adoption, Native American families get preference over everyone else. The case was brought by the state of Texas and three non-Native American families. The Court ruled 7-2 that none of them had standing to sue. This is interesting because sometimes the Court is apparently picky about standing (as in this case), but in the case of the Colorado website developer, Lorie Smith was granted standing even though she wasn't even in the business of developing wedding websites at the time of the suit and hadn't actually turned away any gay couples who wanted her to develop one for them. It is hard to see how Texas was injured by the adoption priority rule but it is equally hard to see how Smith was injured because some day she might enter a new business and some day a gay couple might want to hire her. So what are the rules about standing to sue? There are no rules. The Court just makes them up to suit its current needs.
  
  
• June 23: Immigration enforcement: In an 8-1 decision authored by Brett Kavanaugh, the Court upheld the federal government's right to choose whom to arrest and prosecute for violations of immigration law. The courts have long accepted the idea that prosecutors cannot prosecute every crime due to lack of resources and generally accept prosecutors' decisions about which ones to prosecute. Texas and Louisiana had different ideas than the feds about prosecuting people for violating immigration law, but the Court ruled that it is the feds' call, not the states'. Samuel Alito was the lone dissenter.
  
  
• June 23: Restriction of free speech: Federal law makes it a crime to encourage illegal immigration. This means that federal law bans certain kinds of speech. Is the law in question a violation of the First Amendment? That was the issue here. In a 7-2 ruling written by Amy Coney Barrett, the Court ruled that the law was acceptable because speech that encourages committing a crime is not protected. Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
  
  
• June 27: Power of the state legislatures: The Constitution has a clause that says: "the times, places and manner" of federal elections "shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof." The North Carolina legislature interpreted this to mean that it had sole power over elections, and the governor and courts had nothing to say about them. The Supreme Court didn't buy this and rejected the so-called "independent state legislature theory" 6-3, with John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberals. If the Court had accepted the theory, it would be saying that it itself has no authority over election disputes. That was several bridges too far for three of the conservatives.
  
  
• June 27: Stalking: A Colorado man sent a barrage of thousands of unwanted, threatening messages to a female musician. She felt he was (digitally) stalking her. The man said he was just exercising his right to free speech. A lower court disagreed with him but the Supreme Court vacated that decision. Elena Kagan wrote for the 7-2 majority that the First Amendment "requires proof that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements" and she didn't think that was proven. Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas dissented.
  
  
• June 29: Affirmative Action: Just as the Court chucked out the 1973 Roe decision last year, it chucked out the 1978 Bakke decision this year. In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the Court ruled that universities may not use race (on its own) as a factor in determining admission decisions, even though in Bakke an earlier version of the Court said that was allowed. Stare decisis? Guess that's just some random phrase in a long-dead language.
  
  
• June 29: Religion in the workplace: In the past, the Supreme Court has ruled that if an employee wants some accommodation on account of his or her religion, the employer should grant it if can be easily done without affecting the business. Clearly a store with two employees is hit harder if neither one wants to work on Sunday than a business with thousands of employees and complex schedules. In this case, an evangelical Christian letter carrier, Gerald Groff, who refused to show up for work on Sundays, was disciplined for his absences. The case is complicated because the USPS has a contract with Amazon to deliver packages in rural areas, even on Sundays. Normally, the USPS tried to have someone else deliver the packages on Sundays in Groff's territory, but sometimes there was no one available but Groff, and the USPS didn't want to violate its contract with Amazon, so it ordered Groff to occasionally work on a Sunday. A lower court rejected Groff's claim and said that his refusal to work put a substantial burden on the USPS when it couldn't find anyone else to deliver packages on Sundays in his rural area. The Supreme Court vacated that decision 9-0 and said the USPS didn't do enough to try to accommodate Groff. It sent the case back to the lower courts to be reheard.
  
  
• June 30: Religion vs. discrimination: In this case, a Christian web designer wanted a ruling in advance that would say that if she ever got into the business of designing wedding websites and a gay couple ever asked her to design one, she could refuse. It was decided 6-3 along ideological lines. It is going to be a case study in every law school in the country for decades about the Supreme Court run amok. Not only was the designer not injured in any way, but the courts are not supposed to issue rulings on hypothetical cases, only real ones where someone can prove they were actually injured in some way and they want redress.
  
  
• June 30: Student loan cancellations: The HEROES Act gives the secretary of education the power to waive or modify student loans. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona waived up to $20,000 in loans for some borrowers. John Roberts wrote: "The secretary's plan has 'modified' the cited provisions only in the same sense that the French Revolution 'modified' the status of the French nobility—it has abolished them and supplanted them with a new regime entirely." But the law didn't actually limit the secretary's authority in any way, and that was intentional. Congress granted the secretary the power to use his discretion. Roberts and the five other conservatives didn't like Congress doing this, so they just said: "No."
  

Although there were some exceptions, the conservative majority is continuing to flex its muscles, even when that entails overturning long-standing precedent and granting people who have no conceivable basis for bringing a case standing so the Supremes can rule the way they want to on hypothetical cases. Joe Biden said: "This is not a normal court." Confidence in the Court is at a historic low and justices taking expensive favors from billionaires and not reporting them doesn't help much. But the prevailing view on the Court appears to be: "We can do whatever we want. Who's going to stop us?" (V)

Trump Pressured Ducey to Overturn Arizona Election

The Washington Post has a scoop that is sure to make Special Counsel Jack Smith's ears perk up. By now, Smith and everyone else in the country knows that in November 2020, Donald Trump tried to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to "find" 11,780 more votes for him and Raffensperger refused. What Smith may not have known, but can now discover by going to the Post's website, is that Trump also tried to pressure then-governor of Arizona Doug Ducey (R) into doing the same thing—and got the same result: Ducey refused to play ball.

In addition to directly pressuring Ducey, Trump also asked Mike Pence, a former governor who knew Ducey well, to call Ducey and discuss overturning the Arizona election. Pence did call Ducey several times. Neither man has revealed the calls in public. At a dinner earlier this year, Ducey told a major donor that he was surprised that Smith hadn't asked him about the calls with Trump and Pence yet. Apparently, Smith didn't know about them. Due to the Post's reporting, he may have discovered this on Saturday. We suspect that Smith will soon be asking Ducey to drop by for a pleasant chat, if he hasn't already done so. Raffensperger was interviewed last week. Ducey is likely to be next.

If Smith wants to charge Trump with trying to overturn an election, Trump's interaction with Ducey is just going to add more evidence that can be used at a trial. Trump and Ducey have long had a hot-and-cold relationship, but it was never clear why. Now we might see what the problem could be: Trump asked Ducey to throw the election for him and Ducey refused.

That bitter relationship could have consequences in 2024. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) is up for reelection, although she has not yet announced if she is running. If Kari Lake, who claims to be the governor of Arizona, can't sweet-talk (or use some other method) to convince Trump to put her on the ticket with him, she is likely to run for the Senate against Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and maybe Sinema. This would be a nightmare for the Republicans, so they want Ducey to run for the Republican nomination. He has steadfastly refused. It could well be that if he runs, Trump will oppose him with everything he's got, Ducey knows this, and so has found a new job running a political action committee.

Now that it appears that Trump tried to get election results changed in Georgia and Arizona, inquiring minds want to know if he tried it in other states. The closest states (in terms of actual votes) that Trump lost are Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, and New Hampshire (in that order). Could Trump have tried pressuring officials in all those states? Wisconsin seems a lost cause for Trump since both the governor and SoS in 2020 were Democrats. Nevada was more promising as the then-SoS, Barbara Cegavske, is a Republican. (Note to Jack Smith: Maybe a call to Mrs. Cegavske might be a good idea). In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH) was a potential target, but his dislike for Trump is widely known. Then-NH SoS Bill Gardner is a Democrat. (V)

Trump Holds a Massive Rally in Scott and Haley's Backyard

While Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is currently Donald Trump's biggest rival for the GOP nomination, the former president might need to contend with Nikki Haley or Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) if DeSantis flames out early for any reason. On Saturday, he went to their home turf for a display of massive power. In Pickens, SC (pop. 3,370), he held a rally that drew an estimated 50,000 people, including many from other counties and other states. He took over the entire town. The spirit of grift that infuses all of Trump's activities caught on with many locals. Some homeowners were charging attendees $100 to park in their front yards and one local pizzeria tried to pre-sell spots in its parking lot on Facebook. Other people sold folding chairs and cold drinks to people who had been standing in the withering heat and humidity since early morning to hear Trump. Contrast this with Georgia, where it is illegal to give a free bottle of water to people standing in line for hours in order to vote.

Someone in Trump's campaign chose the location for Trump's first early-state rally wisely. Trump got 75% of the vote in Pickens County, which borders western North Carolina, is just a few miles from northeast Georgia, and is only 100 miles from Ducktown, TN, as the duck flies. The whole area is rural and very Trumpy.

The message to Haley and Scott was clear: I am going to crush you in South Carolina and you will be forced to drop out the next day, so why not save yourself the trouble and just drop out now? Hope springs eternal, so neither one will do that. Besides, Haley isn't running for president. She's running for vice president with DeSantis. Scott is apparently just bored with life as a senator so he is running because he has nothing better to do.

Trump has another advantage in South Carolina that he lacks elsewhere: endorsements. The governor and three U.S. representatives have endorsed him. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has also endorsed Trump, but when he took the stage as a warm-up act, the crowd booed him and called him a traitor (because he once called Trump a "race-baiting xenophobic religious bigot"). In most other states, Republican officials are dividing their time between their offices and their churches, where they are praying that Trump somehow magically goes away and leaves the race.

Other warm-up acts included Gov. Henry McMaster (R-SC), Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette (R-SC), and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). They all praised Trump, as expected.

The rally was nominally a celebration of Independence Day, which is generally an upbeat celebration of America in most places. Trump nevertheless painted a dark picture of America, full of corrupt law-enforcement officials. He also claimed—without a shred of evidence—that Joe Biden has taken bribes from foreign countries. Trump knows that if you tell a lie often enough with a straight face, people will start to believe it.

Naturally, Trump dwelled on his indictments and called them politically motivated. He also called his opponents sick people and degenerates who were "running our country to the ground," and mentioned DeSantis, Haley, and Scott. DeSantis and Haley were met with boos; Scott was met with a polite reaction. Other than mentions of his rivals and Revolutionary War hero Andrew Pickens, for whom the town is named, it was Trump's standard rambling stump speech.

The crowd was enthusiastic. One woman, Sue Beers, said she had been to 10 Trump events. She also said: "We're here to pray for his protection. He's not our Savior. Jesus is our Savior. He's just a man. We believe he's been called by God to help our nation." (V)

The Unchurched Are the New Evangelicals

For years, evangelical voters were a dominant force in politics and their hatred for abortion dominated the Republican Party and affected all elections. That is changing now, but not because they "won" (i.e., the Dobbs decision), but because their numbers are shrinking and religiously unaffiliated voters are now a bigger group. Worse yet for the evangelicals, the unchurched are strongly pro-choice and increasingly saying that this is a major issue for them. Here are the data for which groups say that abortion is a "critical issue" for them.

As you can see, there has been a spectacular rise in the importance of abortion among the religiously unaffiliated since 2015. It used to be that they didn't care so much. Now they do, and in 2020, 71% voted for Joe Biden.

What happened? The process has been ongoing, but Dobbs accelerated it. People who took the right to an abortion for granted didn't prioritize it. But now that it is disappearing before their eyes, it is suddenly a top priority.

It is worth noting that for most of the 20th century, evangelicals were not politically active. They were interested in saving souls, not saving unborn babies. Only when white evangelical leaders began to use abortion as an organizing tool in the 1980s did evangelicals become a political bloc. The same has been true of the religiously unaffiliated. Atheists, agnostics, and lapsed churchgoers were never seen as a group called "the unchurched," as they didn't have any key issues in common. Consequently, Democrats never did much outreach to atheists, agnostics, and people who don't belong to any religious group. They might consider changing that in 2024, given that it is a large group, heavily Democratic, and very focused on one specific issue (abortion) that Democrats already support.

Abortion politics may have another unexpected consequence down the road: dechurching of young women. Many young women are strongly pro-choice and if they belong to a church that is anti-choice, they may resolve the conflict by simply leaving the church and joining the religiously unaffiliated. It's free to join. For organized religion, losing the young tends not to lead to a rosy future a few decades down the road. (V)

The Debate Stage Could Be (Nearly) Empty

The RNC has declared that to get on stage Aug. 23 for the first debate, a candidate must get 1% in three national polls* or two national and two early state polls*. Candidates also need to have 40,000 donors.

What many observers have missed is that little asterisk after "polls." Not all polls qualify. Actually, most polls don't qualify. It isn't that they are biased or run by amateurs. No, it is something simpler: Their samples are too small. The RNC rule for a poll qualifying is that it needs 800 likely Republican primary voters in the sample. Most live interviewer polls and robo polls have between 1,000 and 1,500 respondents, total. Only online polls typically have more. A poll with 1,500 respondents is likely to have about 500 Democrats, 500 Republicans, and 500 independents. Even if every Republican hops up and down swearing that he or she will vote in the primary, that's only 500 likely Republican voters and the poll does not qualify. A poll would probably need 2,500 respondents to have a shot at producing 800 likely Republican voters. Unless the RNC changes the rules at the last minute, it is likely that none of the candidates other than Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence make the cut simply because there aren't enough qualifying polls.

To see the problem, look at Five Thirty Eight's polling database. Look for Republican primary polls with 800 or more LV. They are scarce on the ground. That's going to be a big problem for many candidates. And summer is not high season for polling, so don't expect too many more before the cutoff of Aug. 21.

As just one example of the problem, Fox ran a horse-race poll recently. It had only 391 likely Republican voters in it, so it wouldn't qualify. Fox wants to make the debate a success, of course. It really doesn't want a situation in which only Trump and DeSantis qualify—and Trump doesn't show up. So it could run a poll and get 3,000 valid respondents in hopes of getting 800 likely Republicans. But that essentially triples the cost of the poll. For its own reasons, it might do it, but a pollster like Marist College, which has been working for The New York Times, probably won't do it and neither will most of the others. If the pollsters don't get bigger samples, will the RNC reduce the requirement? Maybe, but a subgroup with 800 people has a margin-of-error of about 3½%. Small samples will be even worse. The RNC doesn't want polls so small that they don't mean anything, especially since 0.4% means "does not qualify" and 0.5% means "qualifies." This is definitely an issue to watch. (V)

Moms for Liberty Is a New Force in Politics

There is a new political kid on the block: Moms for Liberty. It is a far-right group that is focused on parents' rights and it is growing in size. Specifically, it is uniting right-wing women who were not political in the past and giving them a focus: banning books and other school content they don't like. The group now has 120,000 members, with chapters in 44 states. It is even big enough now to have held a national conference on Friday in Philadelphia.

Needless to say, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was there telling the women about all his achievements banning books and discussions of gender identity in Florida schools, and of course how he is for expanding private schools in all forms. Donald Trump also spoke there, but banning books is really DeSantis' issue, not Trump's. Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) also showed up, but they are way behind DeSantis in book burning. If DeSantis is to beat Trump in the Republican primary, these are the voters he needs: conservative suburban women whose primary focus is education.

Critics of M4L have said the group is now moving beyond education and book banning and is embracing an all-purpose anti-LBGTQ+ and anti-diversity agenda. Jazmyn Henderson, a trans woman with the advocacy group ACT UP said: "This is not about ideology. We are talking about trying to wipe a community of people out of existence, about trying to force us back into the shadows." Other opponents of Moms for Liberty have taken to calling them "Klanned Karenhood."

In a way, there is an analogy here with the evangelicals. They weren't an organized political force until a few leaders showed up in the 1980s and basically organized them. Now it is very conservative (some say "bigoted") women with children who are being organized into a political force. (V)

DeSantis Wants to Ride the Anti-LBGTQ Train

Ron DeSantis isn't getting a lot of traction so far. He's been thrashing around looking for some angle to attack front-runner Donald Trump. His latest attempt is to out-bigot Trump, which won't be easy, but DeSantis figures it is worth a try.

In a new video, DeSantis attacks Trump for being too gay friendly and definitely too trans friendly. The video shows Trump expressing support for LGBTQ people. Among other things, he said that Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, is free to use any bathroom she wants to at Trump Tower. He also said that he was fine with trans women competing in the Miss Universe beauty pageant when he owned it. The video contrasts Trump's tacit approval of LGBTQ people with DeSantis' hard line against them. As governor, he signed a number of anti-LGBTQ bills and he is using them now to prove his bona fides as a bigger bigot than Trump. DeSantis undoubtedly has polling showing that bigotry sells in the Republican Party, so he is going all in on it.

Trump's campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, attacked DeSantis and said it showed "a desperate campaign in the last throes of relevancy." Note carefully what he did not say. He didn't say: "Donald Trump supports equal rights for all Americans, including LGBTQ Americans." Trump and Cheung have probably also seen polling that shows bigotry sells within the Republican Party, so the response to DeSantis' video is to attack the campaign and not address the contents of the video.

There was plenty of reaction to the video. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, went on CNN's State of the Union and said: "I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders. And just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space—which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?"

Chris Christie also went on CNN and called it a food fight between teenagers. He told CNN: "I'm not comfortable with it, and I'm not comfortable with the way both Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump are moving our debate in this country. They're trying to divide us further when there are big, big issues to be talking about here."

The Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group, wasn't pleased with DeSantis. It called DeSantis' video "divisive and desperate." It also issued a statement saying: "Conservatives understand that we need to protect our kids, preserve women's sports, safeguard women's spaces and strengthen parental rights, but Ron DeSantis' extreme rhetoric has just ventured into homophobic territory."

Yup. And it was a carefully calculated move. DeSantis seems to think his only chance is to outflank Trump on the right. So things like issuing a bigoted video, shipping migrants from Texas to Massachusetts under false pretenses, and restricting what Florida teachers may say in class are his tools. We presume DeSantis knew that there would be plenty of reaction to the video, but when you are running for president and are the underdog, you need to shake things up. Besides, it is well known that Trump's super power is saying out loud what his supporters are thinking. Now DeSantis was no doubt thinking: "Two can play this game!" But the real problem for DeSantis is that Trump's supporters like The Donald's bombastic personality more than they care about policy issues. DeSantis doesn't seem to get this and is focusing on supporting even more right-wing policy issues than Trump. That's probably not going to do the job since policy isn't central with the base these days. (V)

Biden Is Going to Unleash His Secret Weapon

Joe Biden has a secret weapon and he is going to use it to the max. It is former president Barack Obama, who is still popular with Democrats. This doesn't mean Obama will be out on the trail every day. He won't. But he will be used for fundraising and at strategic moments, when Obama thinks he can maximize impact.

In particular, Obama is popular with young voters and he will try to energize them, make sure they are registered, and work on getting them to the polls. He is going to do that in nontraditional ways. For example, he sat for interviews with CNN's Christiane Amanpour and comedian Hasan Minhaj. He was blown away when he saw the interviews had been watched 27 million times. It is an extension of what he did when he was in the White House, such as going to Alaska with Bear Grylls and having dinner with Anthony Bourdain in Hanoi for the chef's show Parts Unknown.

If Obama can connect with young voters, that would be a major boost for the 80-year-old Biden, who is not good at that. Young people are strongly Democratic, but they tend not to vote. Obama's job is to convince them that voting is important. He doesn't have to tell them who to vote for. They can figure that part out themselves. Pollster John Della Volpe recently noted that young people are now more apathetic than ever and the recent Supreme Court decisions will just make that worse. They don't believe that politics is a meaningful way to change the system. It is Obama's task to convince them otherwise. A lot rests on whether he succeeds or not. (V)

Would Fusion Voting Help Reduce Partisanship?

If every person who voted for Jill Stein in 2016 had voted for Hillary Clinton instead, Clinton would have become president. We doubt that many of them preferred Donald Trump to Clinton and we doubt that any of them expected Stein to be elected president. But third-party candidates sometimes lead to undesirable results. Are there ways to fix the system?

One way that is gradually becoming more common is ranked-choice voting. There you can vote for a fringe candidate and when the fringe candidate is eliminated, your second choice can be for one of the major-party candidates. In this way, you get to make your point without throwing the election to a candidate you hate.

But there is another system change to achieve the same goal that might be more acceptable to some people: fusion voting. In a few states, it is legal for multiple parties to nominate the same candidate. In New York, the Working Families Party almost always nominates the Democrat and the Conservative Party almost always nominates the Republican. The votes that a candidate gets on multiple lines are added up, so a vote for Joe Biden as the Working Families candidate counted exactly the same as a vote for him as a Democrat. By allowing small parties who get on ballot to nominate a major-party candidate, voters who want to make a point of being to the left of the Democrat or to the right of the Republican can easily do so without endangering the major-party candidate. For example, Joe Biden got 386,613 votes in New York on the Working Families ticket. That was 7% of his total vote. Donald Trump got 296,335 votes on the Conservative Party line, or 9% of his total. The Libertarian Party got 60,383 votes, the Green Party got 32,832 votes, and the Independence Party got 22,656 votes, but they all had their own candidates. Fusing works better.

Fusion voting was common until about 1900, when the major parties got together to ban it. If the No Labels group were to invest its $70 million in trying to re-legalize fusion voting in many states, it could advance its stated goals of reducing extremism and making politics work again. Instead it is likely to sow chaos and may end up electing the most extreme candidate. (V)

Most Politicians Are Scammers

When you get an e-mail from a Nigerian prince offering a big reward in return for a small investment on your part, you probably instantly know that it is a scam and there is no prince. But what is your reaction when a politician solicits a donation and says it will be matched 2:1, 3:1, or 5:1 by a Nigerian prince or other anonymous donor? Sounds like a good time to donate, right? Actually, no. It's a scam. There is no prince or anonymous donor. It is all made up. Arkansas AG Tim Griffin recently wrote an op-ed for Politico warning people about the scam. Making a donation to a politician you like is fine, just don't expect it to be matched. Oh, and there is no deadline, in contrast to what the e-mails state.

Griffin got the idea of writing the op-ed when one of his campaign consultants told him to include in his fundraising pitch words saying that a donation now would be doubled. When Griffin said that donations would not be doubled, the consultant said that doesn't matter, it is a proven tactic for increasing contributions, and besides, everybody does it. Griffin didn't do it and wrote the op-ed to warn people. In the op-ed, Griffin wrote: "When did it become acceptable for political leaders to deceive their supporters for contributions?" He said that normal puffery ("I'm the best candidate") is fine, but not outright lies.

He also noted that in cases where it is true, that is, there is an anonymous donor matching every contribution, it is probably a crime. Federal law limits donations for federal office to $3,300 per election. The anonymous donor would be allowed to match the first $3,300 worth of small donors who responded to the e-mail, but after that any additional matching would be above $3,300 and thus illegal. Many states also have limits for state elections, so unlimited matching for state elections is also criminal above the threshold. In some states, the limits are quite low. For example, for state Senate races in Montana, the maximum donation is $180. (V)

Brazilian Court Bars Bolsonaro from Running for Office for Eight Years

Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, sometimes called "Trump of the tropics," lost his reelection bid and made false claims that the election was rigged and that he really won. His supporters stormed the presidential palace, the Congress, and the Supreme Court on Jan. 8, 2023.

After losing, he fled the country and went to Florida. He also skipped the inauguration of the new president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and refused to hand over the ceremonial presidential sash, a symbolic gesture to demonstrate the peaceful transfer of power. The U.S. doesn't have a presidential sash to hand over, but Donald Trump could have symbolically handed over 50 cartons of classified documents in lieu thereof. He didn't.

Bolsonaro's term ended 6 months ago, on Dec. 31, 2022. On Friday, the Superior Electoral Court voted to convict Bolsonaro of abuse of power. In a 382-page opinion, the Court ruled that Bolsonaro "was fully, personally responsible" for attacking the electoral system and that he also "violated his duties as a president." It also said: "It is not possible to turn a blind eye to the anti-democratic effects of violent speeches and lies that jeopardize the credibility of the electoral system." Bolsonaro was warned 31 times by the courts. On that point, Donald Trump beat him. After the Nov. 2020 election, Donald Trump filed 62 lawsuits claiming he won and lost 61 of them. The one "win" was in a case in which a Pennsylvania judge ruled that absentee voters had 3 days to "cure" ballots that were in error.

If the ruling against Bolsonaro survives an appeal to the Supreme Court, as expected, Bolsonaro will be banned from running for public office for 8 years. This is how things work in a Third-World country: Corrupt politicians are sentenced within 6 months instead of the normal 6 years in advanced countries.

Bolsonaro ran in 2018 on promises to drain the swamp. He didn't. But he did gut the Amazon rainforest, widened the country's culture-war divisions, and presided over one of the deadliest COVID-19 outbreaks. So yes, he is a lot like Trump. (V)

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