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One of the more remarkable responses to Donald Trumps loss in the 2020 presidential election has been the vilification not of voter fraud but, instead, of voting.

Because Trump claimed that the election had been tainted by rampant fraud and because no evidence of fraud emerged, many of his allies scrambled to find a middle ground in which they could claim that the election was somehow suspect without having to amplify those claims. Many settled on the idea that the election was unfair because states had expanded voting mechanisms because of the pandemic.

These arguments often centered on exaggerated or untrue claims that these expansions violated state constitutions. But they also shared another quality: They were complaints that too many people voted. Sometimes these criticisms were at least layered with hand-wringing that, say, ballot drop boxes allowed for more fraudulent votes to be cast, which is not true. Often, though, they were just complaints that it was too easy to cast a ballot and, by extension, that too many legitimate voters were able to cast votes for Joe Biden.

This line of rhetoric (which is omnipresent once you start noticing it) is a reflection of the Republican Partys long-standing apathy about the process of submitting issues to voters and tallying their responses. The electoral college has been hailed by the right as not only necessary but wise, even though it can award the presidency to the less-popular candidate (as it did for the Republican nominees in 2000 and 2016). Republicans have trotted out the hoary, overstated dichotomy between democracy and republicanism; some, like Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), went on to try to help Trump retain power despite losing the 2020 election.

Over the weekend in Texas, the state Republican Party offered up perhaps the most explicit example of separating election results from actual voting. At its convention, the party proposed and its delegates approved a platform demanding that winning statewide office necessitate also winning at least half of Texas counties.

The endorsement of a constitutional amendment mandating that criterion will almost certainly not result in it being implemented and, even if it was, it would probably face significant legal challenges. But that this is considered a viable approach to distributing power among the leaders of the states largest political party is remarkable.

Its worth fleshing out how ridiculous the idea is. For one thing, there are a lot of very big, very empty counties in Texas, which has 254 such subdivisions. The 127 least-populous counties are home to about 916,000 people, a total that is only 3 percent of the statewide population. There are seven counties that, by themselves, have more residents than those 127 counties. But even if a candidate won all seven of those counties (and the 14.8 million people who live in them), she could be defeated if her opponent won those 127 smallest counties and one more. And that means a Republican: Those smallest counties backed Trump by an average of 59 percentage points in 2020.

The proposed amendment would apply only to statewide offices, so lets consider the 2022 gubernatorial contest between Gov. Greg Abbott (R) and former congressman Beto ORourke (D). Abbott won 235 counties, 107 more than he needed to secure a majority of counties won.

The distribution of the county-level vote margins in that contest looked like this:

But that misrepresents the number of residents in each county. If we scale the circles by total votes cast, you can see that the election was closer than the chart above might suggest (though Abbott still won handily).

If we adjust the results so that the Democrat ORourke won by one vote (adding Democratic votes across counties to match the statewide distribution), we get a result that looks like the chart below. ORourke gets more votes but is still 98 counties short of a majority of counties won.

Because rural areas of Texas (and the broader United States) are more heavily White, the proposed rules effect is to provide an enormous advantage to White Texans. In the scenario above where ORourke wins, about three-quarters of the states non-White population lives in the counties where he prevails. But according to the proposed constitutional amendment, the winner would be the Republican who prevailed in the majority of counties, counties where a majority of the states White population lives.

There is a reason that county-level apportionment was used in the Jim Crow-era South, as historian Kevin Kruse noted over the weekend.

If Texas Republicans embrace this return to a county-unit type of system, he wrote, theyll actually have created something even more unequal than the scheme concocted by segregationists of a century ago.

How many Democratic votes would we need to add for ORourke to win a majority of counties? About 14.2 million in an election where 8.1 million votes were cast.

If we transfer votes from Abbott to ORourke, that number drops, but the point remains: The ability of a Democrat to win statewide office in the state would be significantly hobbled under the scenario proposed by the Republican Party. Which, of course, is the point.

Again, this will not be effected. But it is worth considering for the light it sheds on other efforts from the party, such as the backlash against expansions of voting access in 2020 or protectionist views of how the electoral college and Senate allocate power. Thats particularly true when considering why Texas Republicans think this is important now: because the party is at increasing risk of losing statewide elections. The 2020 presidential margin in the state was the narrowest since President Bill Clintons 1996 reelection.

If voting isnt securing you the power you seek, you can try harder to win votes. Or you can change the rules so that power isnt as securely tied to voters.

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Analysis | The Texas GOP takes the party's hostility to democracy to a new level - The Washington Post

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin left the Democratic Party on Friday and registered as an independent, further cementing his yearslong fallout with the party.

Manchin announced in a statement that he changed his voting registration to have no party affiliation at West Virginias State Capitol in Charleston, along with a photo of him holding what appears to be a registration form.

I have never seen America through a partisan lens, he said in a statement announcing the switch.

Manchin plans to stay in the Senate Democratic Caucus, however, and keep his positions there, including as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. He is also a member of Democratic leadership, as a vice chair of the caucuss Policy and Communications Committee. Charlotte Laracy, a spokesperson for Manchin, said he will continue to caucus with Democrats.

The change comes as Manchin has repeatedly clashed with President Joe Biden and his former Democratic colleagues over a host of matters, most prominently implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, Democrats landmark climate law. Manchin has also joined Republicans on numerous votes seeking to overturn Biden administrations energy and climate actions.

The switch to independent could have implications for Manchins political future. He said last year he wouldnt run for reelection and didnt run in the Democratic primary this month for his Senate seat or for governor.

But he has considered running as an independent for the Senate and has reportedly faced pressure to run for governor. The registration keeps his options open for an independent run for either office. Both races are in November.

Manchin said in his Friday statement that since joining the Senate in 2010, I have seen both the Democrat and Republican parties leave West Virginia and our country behind for partisan extremism while jeopardizing our democracy.

He added: Today, our national politics are broken and neither party is willing to compromise to find common ground. To stay true to myself and remain committed to put country before party, I have decided to register as an independent with no party affiliation and continue to fight for Americas sensible majority.

Manchin has previously brushed away suggestions that he might run for Senate or governor as an independent, though he has not ruled out a run.

He told reporters this month that hes an ally of Steve Williams, the mayor of Huntington and the Democratic nominee for governor, who faces long odds against Patrick Morrisey, the Republican nominee.

Steve Williams is a friend of mine. Weve known each other for 40 years. I contributed to his campaign, I encouraged him to run, he said May 20. I dont know where this is coming from, so I cant really say anything.

The statement came after West Virginia MetroNews reported that Republicans opposed to Morrisey, the states attorney general, were pushing Manchin to jump into the race. Morrisey came out ahead in a bruising GOP primary against former state lawmaker Moore Capito and businessman Chris Miller.

Manchin has also mostly dismissed the concept of running as an independent for Senate but has not ruled it out, CNN reported.

He endorsed Glenn Elliott, the mayor of Wheeling, in the Democratic primary, although he has not made an explicit endorsement in the general election. Jim Justice, the current Republican governor, is favored to easily win the race.

Manchin has until Aug. 1 to file for either race as an independent.

Manchin has led the Energy and Natural Resources Committee since Democrats took the Senate majority in 2021.

While his vocal support for mining, coal and other fossil fuels has often angered Democrats, hes been an ally on matters like conservation and some clean energy policies.

He also was a lead author of the IRA, the 2022 law that included $369 billion of spending for climate change and clean energy, the largest climate measure in the nations history.

But since that law has gone into effect, Manchin has been critical of many of the Biden administrations actions to implement it and threatened to join GOP efforts to repeal it.

Manchin has argued it has been too favorable to clean energy at the expense of fossil fuels and domestic energy. He has also clashed with Democrats on other major issues, such as taxation and immigration.

Manchin has been a Democrat since his first run for West Virginias House of Delegates in 1982. He lost that bid but won a state Senate election in 1986. He was later governor from 2005 to 2010.

While the Democratic Party was dominant in West Virginia at the time and Manchins centrist and conservative positions were welcome there, the state has since moved dramatically toward Republicans, who hold all major state offices and all but a handful of legislative seats.

The national Democratic Party has also united in more liberal positions in that time, including on issues around environmental policy.

The Senates other three independents, Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Angus King (Maine), all caucus with Democrats and some hold leadership positions. Sinema was a Democrat until 2022 and was allowed to keep her spots.

Reporter Garrett Downs contributed.

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Manchin to keep Energy gavel after dumping Democratic Party - E&E News by POLITICO

(May 31, 2024 / JNS)

The last eight months have shaken the faith of many American Jews in the future of their community. The surge in antisemitism, especially on college campuses, has shattered any illusions we might have had about ensuring that Jew-hatred would be confined to the fever swamps of the far right and left in U.S. society. But as grievous as that threat to their safety may beand the gravity of that peril cannot be overestimatedthe Jewish community should also be pondering just how secure they can be in an America whose democratic norms and the rule of law can no longer be relied upon.

The prosecution and now the conviction of former President Donald Trump in a New York City courtroom on dubious charges and via a judicial process that is, at best, questionable, forces us to ask that question.

Breaking norms and precedents

To broach this topic and consider the consequences of a partisan prosecution of both a former president and the choice of the Republican Party for the 2024 election, one neednt be an admirer of Trump or even be planning to vote for him in November. Trump is a singular figure in American political history and has broken all sorts of precedents with his behavior and speechbefore, during and after his presidency. But at this point, the same can be said of his opponents, who seem to believe that his allegedly unique awfulness not merely permits but obligates them to break rules and precedents in their efforts to stop him from governing while he was president, to prevent his re-election, and now, to thwart him from gaining a second term in 2024.

Any discussion of which side is worse in this debate can be attributed to the type of whataboutism that involves justifying things that shouldnt be justified. But suffice it to say that when he took office in 2017, he rejected the idea of having his administration pursue criminal charges against his opponents, in particular, his 2016 Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton. In what for him was a relatively rare instance of rising above feuds, Trump rightly understood that following up on the irresponsible rhetoric about locking her up that was heard at his campaign rallies was the last thing the country needed, regardless of whether a partisan prosecutor could have resurrected charges about her violating the rules about the handling of classified information.

But his opponents, outraged at the thought of Trump sitting in the White House, did not reciprocate. They promoted the Russia collusion hoaxa conspiracy theory about Trump being a Russian agent for whom Moscow supposedly stole an electionfor years and then impeached him on a partisan charge of withholding foreign aid to Ukraine. Silicon Valley oligarchs that control the virtual public square and major media outlets then conspired to suppress stories about corruption charges against the family of his 2020 opponent.

All of this was done because of the conviction that Trump was an opponent of democracy, though there was no evidence of any efforts on his part to behave in this manner while president. But his reaction to the 2020 vote seemed at least in part to confirm the claims that he was not prepared to accept an election loss. While he can be blamed for the events that led to the disgraceful Capitol Riot on Jan. 6, 2021, it was no insurrection, and, though he behaved recklessly and without grace, he peacefully left office that month.

It is possible that the Republican Party might have been prepared to choose an alternative to Trump in 2024, but once Democrats began efforts to confiscate his income, throw him off the ballot and then jail him on a raft of charges that were not just flimsy but politically motivated, the chances of the GOP moving on from him were over. Convincedand not without reasonthat what was going on was a campaign of lawfare, akin to the sorts of bills of attainder (in which the British parliament and crown had historically legislated against specific individuals) specifically prohibited by the U.S. Constitution, his party rallied around him.

Burning down democracy to save it

Undaunted by the idea that they were essentially burning down democracy to supposedly save it, Democratic prosecutors, cheered on by their party base, moved ahead. The most dubious of those charges was the case brought against him in a New York state court. In this instance, a prosecutor who had gained election by promising to jail Trump conjured up an unprecedented indictment involving not only murky legal theories but also a state trial on federal election law. It did involve a disgraceful (though not necessarily illegal) hush money payment by Trump to a former porn star. While designed to humiliate the ex-president, it was also conducted in such a blatantly unfair manner that it did nothing to undermine support for him. The pre-ordained guilty verdict is unlikely to be sustained in the appellate courts but, like the trial, it constitutes a form of election interference that both parties would denounce as the stuff of banana republics or President Vladimir Putins Russian regime if it were happening elsewhere.

None of this represents a reason to vote for Trump or President Joe Biden. Still, the effort to imprison an American political leader, no matter how controversial, in this manner is a crossing of the Rubicon that could have devastating consequences going forward. At this point, it no longer matters who did what to whom first. The only thing to be considered is that Democrats are trying to imprison the leader of the GOP and that it is unlikely that Republicans will refrain from playing the same game in the future, especially if, as the polls currently indicate, they return to power in January 2025.

What does this have to do with the fate of American Jewry?

Like all Americans, Jews have a stake in the preservation of their countrys democratic form of government. What made the United States a haven in the history of the Diaspora was its particular brand of constitutional democracy based on the ideal of equal justice under the law. That allowed Jews to ascend to leadership positions in virtually every sector of American society, secure in the belief that there were no religious tests to constrain them and that the rule of law protected them in a way it had never consistently done elsewhere. America wasnt a Jewish utopia, but it did provide an opportunity for freedom without requiring Jews to give up their identity, faith or interests.

On the surface, the Trump drama and the backlash it is causing may not seem to have anything to do with the Jews. But if the United States is, as it might be, on the verge of no longer being a place where we can count on the rule of law as well as one with a political culture in which the major parties will seek to jail each others leaders, then even a cursory knowledge of Jewish history, would teach us that Jews will no longer be safe from persecution.

A surge in antisemitism

The post-Oct. 7 surge in antisemitism has already shaken confidence in the Jewish future. A form of left-wing Jew-hatredrooted in toxic ideas like critical race theory and intersectionalityhas created a new orthodoxy in academia by which Jews and Israel could be smeared and delegitimized as white oppressors and undeserving of rights. The willingness of mainstream corporate media outlets to normalize this new antisemitism remains deeply troubling. Their willingness to treat prejudicial canards about Zionism being a form of racisma blatant lie that has its roots in Marxist and Soviet propaganda of the pastas something that decent people should agree to disagree about has resulted in Jews being marginalized, shunned and endangered.

If you add this factor of newly fashionable antisemitism to a toxic brew of political instability caused by the anti-Trump lawfare campaign, its possible to imagine a scenario where the sort of Jew-hatred on college campuses spreads with unimaginable consequences. The strife at academic institutions, which is part of a broader battle over the future of America and the West, again illustrates that the Jews are always the canaries in the coal mine. We cant know where all this will end, but in an atmosphere of this sort of political strife, it isnt unreasonable to wonder about scenarios in which American Jews will be targeted in ways that seemed unimaginable not that long ago.

The only reason I can give for optimism is that Im reasonably sure that the vast majority of Americans dont want any of this. They may be bifurcated in their politics and distrust people on the other side of the political aisle. But if there is anything that Ive learned in my travels around the country in the last eight years, it is that most Americans dont want their politicians to be at each others throats and oppose extremism of all kinds. The talk of civil war, which was given full expression in a recent dystopian film of the same name, seems easy to imagine among the chattering and governing classes yet abhorrent to the overwhelming majority of people they hope to influence and rule.

The conviction of Trump on the most unreasonable and openly partisan charges against him may mean that there is no turning back. In spite of that, reasonable people must urge their political leaders to step back from the abyss. The surge in antisemitism is a warning to Jews and non-Jews alike that ideas essentially at war with American exceptionalism pose an immediate danger to our society. If we are now to add a new political norm whereby those who lose elections must fear prosecution, regardless of their actions, then it is entirely possible that the era when Jews could regard America as a safe place could well be over.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNSJewish News Syndicate. Follow him @jonathans_tobin.

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Subverting democracy and the fate of the Jews - JNS.org - JNS.org

Call me small minded. Or nave. Or partisan. I lay claim to little bits of all three attributes. Any one of which may account for my railing against the local assaults on individual freedom while overlooking a larger threat to democracy. Not so much the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though, with good cause, President Biden has labeled it as such. Rather, the possibly bigger threat to democracy, also duly labeled by the President the scary orange dictator-in-waiting on the home front, former President Donald Trump.

Here I am claiming that burdensome taxation represents a threat to personal freedom. That the granting of massive property tax favors to hand-picked business interests by unelected bureaucratic agencies violates the democratic spirit. That the coercion (by an equally unelected State agency) of local schools to erase traditional sports team names represents an unwarranted usurpation of local decision making. That the self-assured presumption by city government to arbitrarily enroll homeowners with an electricity supplier of its choice (unless they take the step to opt-out) is a free-choice-skirting imposition of government authority.

I often write about these abrogations of freedom. Im concerned that many elected politicians and, even worse, unelected functionaries of the administrative state want to tell you and me what kind of car to drive or stove to buy. All for the greater good, of course. Or for your own good, as my parents often said. And they, these new parental figures, may well be right to think that they must look out for people such as you and me. Decent folks, for the most part, but certainly not to trusted with too much freedom of choice.

As if to prove the point, millions of deluded Americans, I admit to being among that number, fail to see the unmistakable similarities between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. Between the orange headed monster and that other monster who orchestrated the extermination of 6 million Jews. Between the far right MAGA mob that staged a several-hour assault on the Capitol and the Nazi brown shirts who destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses during the two-day Kristallnacht and carried out the yearslong cleansing process of judenrein (free of Jews) across Germany and the occupied countries.

As Ive admitted, that I dont see something doesnt mean that its not real. And although the likes of Hillary Clinton and Robert DeNiro (Hes [Trump] a pig Id like to punch him in the mouth) appear to be well-fed, well-clothed, and well-feted in respectable circles despite their eight-year tour of sneering at our domestic Hitler, those appearances do not necessarily prove them wrong. Do not necessarily indicate that they do not feel at all threatened but might simply detest Donald Trump. Perhaps, to be fair, they and the multitude of journalists and pundits who have made a nice living drawing the Hitler or swine comparisons have courageously surmounted their fear of imminent suffering, privation, and imprisonment to sound a needed alarm.

A columnist in my favorite local newspaper recently was so bold as to take the historical comparison a step further in likening Trump to another Teutonic destroyer: Wilhelm II, the last Kaiser of Imperial Germany. With the Wilhelm/ Hitler/Trump continuum, we neatly cover two world wars (both kindled by the first pair of moral cretins), 100 million dead, and the even worse outcome likely if Trump were to win a second term as President. During which term, he will somehow, despite a powerful entrenched resistance to his every action, be able to wreak holy vengeance on immigrants, minorities, unfriendly journalists, EV owners, career civil servants, Knicks fans, anti-frackers, LGBTQs, and weekend golfers failing to sport a red MAGA cap.

Now, it is fair to observe that Donald Trump is a bit, or more, of the cad, the narcissist, the performer. Close in spirit to former President Bill Clinton in many ways. Another kinship is that both were impeached. In the words of the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, Impeachment is forever.

Ms. Pelosi, of course, is a non-partisan guardian of democracy, well remembered for the stateswomanlike tearing up of her copy of President Trumps 2020 State of the Union address before assembled representatives, guests and a national television audience. According to some, especially those generally alarmed by Trumps breaches of decorum and norms, this was far from a threat to democracy, but rather a rip-roaring defense of it. Amazingly, Speaker Pelosi has gone on to lead a calm and prosperous life. But maybe Trump and the MAGA hordes are simply biding their time. Or maybe, as Im inching toward believing, the allegation that Trump and his supporters represent a dire threat to democracy is more an expression of self-interested partisanship than an honest assessment.

Which brings me back to my more local concerns. How is it that an unelected group of individuals, almost universally unknown to the voting taxpayers, can give a 10-year fixed assessment to the billionaire owners of a luxury resort on the northern shore of Canandaigua Lake? An assessment, no less, that sits at probably 15% of full market value. At the same time, those aforementioned taxpaying commoners are seeing the assessments on their property bumped up by anywhere from 30% to 80%. The questionable reason given for this beautifully democratic reassessment is that it ensures that everyone is paying property taxes on full market value.

Granted this apparent undemocratic skewing of the tax system doesnt rise to a Hitlerian level. It doesnt involve Trump or Biden (or does it?). In the big picture it may not even represent a threat to democracy. If I were larger of mind, Id likely ignore such a parochial issue and go on to the bigger threat. Come to think of it, I have.

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GUEST APPEARANCE: Threats to democracy both local, not-so-local - Finger Lakes Times

Trump in court yesterday (Jabin Botsford-Pool/Getty Images)

Whatever you think of Donald Trump and I for one think very little of him his conviction as a felon for what would ordinarily be a minor misdemeanour by a biased jury is a grim day for democracy in America. Yesterdays decision, the culmination of a vindictive prosecution, was less dramatic than the ransacking of the US Capitol by a pro-Trump mob after the 2020 election but the long-term ramifications are likely to be far more serious.

Trump, of course, is no angel. In 2020, he attempted to suborn vice-president Mike Pence into delaying the congressional ratification of the election results, and pressured Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, into finding enough votes to change the electoral college outcome in his favour in Georgia. In seven other states, Trumps henchmen also plotted to use fake electors to swing the results. To their credit, Pence, Raffensperger and other senior Republicans stood up to Trumps bullying. The rule of law in the United States was put to the test by Donald Trump and it passed the test.

But now, anti-Trump Democrats have put the rule of law in America to the test again and this time it has been bent to the point of breaking. In February, a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of civil fraud in a case involving alleged overstatements of real estate values. And yesterday, following the prosecution of Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg, another Manhattan jury found Trump guilty of alleged violations in a case involving the reporting of hush money payments to the porn star Stormy Daniels. It was the first time a sitting or former US president has been convicted of a crime. It was also the first time that the allies of a president of one party have successfully weaponised the American judicial system in an attempt to destroy the presidential candidate of another.

In both of these cases, the partisan motives of the Democratic prosecutors and judges were evident. Campaigning as a Democrat for the office of Attorney General in New York State in 2018, Letitia James promised that she would selectively prosecute Trump, and find some excuse, any excuse, to do so: I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president, she said. I will be shining a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings and every dealing. The civil fraud case brought against Trump by James was presided over by Judge Arthur Engoron, an elected judge and a Democrat who was elected to the First Judicial District of New York in 2015 without any Republican opponent, so rare are Republicans in New York.

The partisanship of the Democratic officials in the hush-money case has been just as blatant. Charges like those brought against Trump in the hush money case were rejected as too weak by Cyrus Vance, the previous Manhattan district Attorney, and they were also rejected as too flimsy by Vances successor, Manhattans current DA, Alvin Bragg. Bragg only changed his mind and brought charges against Trump after two things happened. The first was the publication of a book People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account by Mark Pomerantz, a member of Braggs team who resigned in protest in 2022, claiming that Bragg was not doing enough to prosecute Trump. The second was the fact that, by 2023, it was becoming clear that Trump would be the Republican nominee for the presidency.

The partisanship of the Democratic officials in the hush-money case has been just as blatant.

In the hush money case, Bragg turned what would ordinarily be a minor misdemeanour involving falsifying records into a felony, by claiming that it was somehow part of a nefarious scheme to interfere in the 2016 election. Yet even eminent legal experts find it hard to explain exactly why Trump was charged: last year, even the Left-wing website Vox described the cases legal theory as dubious.

In these two New York cases and a third case in January, in which Trump was fined an exorbitant $83 million for allegedly defaming E. Jean Carroll after another jury in Democratic Manhattan had found him guilty of sexual abuse, but not rape the legal theories may have been questionable, but the motivations of the prosecution were obvious. It is difficult not to believe that the purpose of the extraordinarily high fines in the civil fraud case and the defamation case has been to cripple Trumps presidential campaign against Biden. And the manifest purpose of the conversion of a minor misdemeanour into a felony seems just as clear to allow Biden and other Democrats to brand Trump as a convicted felon between now and the November election, and, if possible, to remove Trump from the campaign trail by jailing him.

Even more disturbing than these kangaroo court trials in one-party Democratic New York is the Espionage Act case against Trump, currently being prosecuted in Florida by Special Counsel Jack Smith. In 2016, all Democratic justices voted with the Republicans on the Supreme Court to overturn Smiths earlier prosecution of Republican governor Robert McDonnell in a corruption case involving gifts; the unanimous court warned of the broader legal implications of the Governments boundless interpretation of the federal bribery statute. In spite of or perhaps because of his overzealousness as a prosecutor, Smith was appointed by Bidens Attorney General Merrick Garland, who just happened to have been blocked from a seat on the Supreme Court by the Republican Senate majority in 2016 after then-president Obama nominated him. A minor dispute over the possession of classified documents between ex-president Trump and the bureaucrats of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) gave Garland a chance to exact personal revenge. In August 2022, Garland authorised an unprecedented raid by FBI agents who, in Trumps absence, ransacked the Florida home of the ex-president.

Like Trump, Joe Biden kept boxes of classified documents in his home following his term as Barack Obamas vice-president. And like Trump, Biden was investigated by a special counsel appointed by Merrick Garland, Robert Hur. But Hur refused to press charges under the Espionage Act against Biden on the grounds that he is an elderly man with a poor memory. In stark and disturbing contrast, Smith issued a 37-count indictment against Trump, with most of the charges being based on the Espionage Act of 1917.

From the very beginning, the Espionage Act a vague, sinister law passed by Congress in a fit of hysteria during the First World War has been abused by presidents against opposition politicians and journalists. President Woodrow Wilsons Democratic administration used it to give his Socialist presidential rival, Eugene Debs, a 10-year prison term in 1919. In the same year, Victor Berger, a Socialist member of the House of Representatives, was also convicted under the legislation. In spite of winning an election, Berger was denied his seat in Congress and disqualified from public office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, an irrelevant clause designed to prevent ex-Confederate insurrectionists from regaining power after the Civil War. Ironically, this is the same archaic provision that was weaponised recently by Democratic officials in Colorado, Maine and Illinois, who sought to disqualify Trump from appearing on Republican primary ballots in those states, before a unanimous Supreme Court in 2024 ruled against such efforts.

Having run for President in 1920 from behind bars, Eugene Debs was pardoned by Republican president Warren G. Harding in 1921, while Bergers conviction was also overturned in the same year. In a similar vein, we can hope that enlightened state or federal courts will overturn the unjust convictions of Trump. But whether or not that happens, the damage to Americas democracy has largely been done.

In the short run, the corruption of the American legal system by Democrats out to get Trump has shattered the reputation of New York state as a safe place to live and do business. Yet far worse is the damage to Americas global reputation. Thanks to these Soviet-style show trials, the US can no longer plausibly claim to be a global example of the nonpartisan rule of law and constitutional government. That reputation was already damaged by Trumps clumsy attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Today, however, thanks to his enemies willingness to turn the courts into tools of election interference, that perception that the US is now the worlds largest banana republic has been cemented.

For in the future, by weaponising state law to try to destroy federal candidates and officeholders of the rival party, Democrats have opened a Pandoras box. It is probably only a matter of time before Republican attorney generals or former Democratic politicians on their own trumped-up charges. And why not? The use of lawfare against Trump has put a target on the back of Democratic politicians. Already some Republicans are calling for prosecutions of James and Bragg under an obscure federal statute against electoral interference. After all, such prosecutions, ruinous as they would be, are more plausible than the cases that those prosecutors have brought against Trump.

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Trump's conviction is an assault on democracy - UnHerd