Doom Report (Week 75: The Attorney General Does Not Respond Substantively to Any of These Arguments)

On Monday, Kier Starmer announced his resignation as UK Prime Minister.  If you don’t know who he is, think of him as the British Chuck Schumer: ostensibly progressive, disturbingly pro-genocide, beholden to corporate interests, and desperate to maintain the status quo.  And, as it turns out, people just aren’t interested in the status quo any more.  The status quo kinda sucks.  So I suppose it isn’t surprising that its defenders are starting to go down.

Why should you care?  Well, I just gave you a hint: the Labour party, as I often say when I talk about British politics, is sort of like our corporate Democrats.  They too are married to the status quo, and suckle at the teat of corporate donors.  They can’t advocate big changes, because the people that fund them don’t want that.  Haven’t you ever wondered why you see many companies—and almost all billionaires—giving money to both Democrats and Republicans?  It’s because they’re hedging their bets: no matter who wins, they’ll be owed a favor.  And the favor is almost always tax breaks for the rich, reduction in the social safety nets, keeping labor laws and financial regulations to a minimum ... that sort of thing.  The sort of thing that makes them richer and us poorer.

So, if supporters of the status quo are starting to lose—anywhere in the world—I call that a cause for celebration.  We need some status up in here that ain’t so quo: some status perturbātus, even.  Ten years ago, Bernie Sanders was a crazy guy with kooky hair whose ideas were completely unrealistic; today he’s usually considered an elder statesman and sometimes even the most important voice in the Democratic party—despite the fact that he’s not even a Democrat.  (While Sanders has run as a Democrat in two presidential campaigns, he has officially been an independent since leaving the Liberty Union Party in 1977.)  AOC is a political rockstar.  Mamdani is, openly, a Democratic Socialist, and the 3 NYC candidates he endorsed for the House of Representatives all won their primaries, which all but guarantees that they will win the seats.  The billionaires and centimillionaires are running and losing; the bartenders and union organizers are running and winning.

For a long list of all the things Starmer did wrong as Prime Minister, you could consult Owen Jones; he’s a bit biased, but thorough.  For some historical perspective on why Starmer’s replacement will be the 7th PM in 10 years, check out Pod Save America’s interview with Ben Rhodes.  For even more perspective on how the Starmer story is relevant to US politics, I’d recommend Jamelle Bouie’s Takes™.

For a deeper dive on the “Mamdani as kingmaker” angle, Zeteo has interviews with all 3 candidates, Adam Conover’s new Factually subsegment (yet unnamed) talks to Brennan Lee Mulligan and Ed Zitron, and, ever dependable, Owen Jones is back again, this time talking to Usamah Andrabi, the communications director of Justice Democrats.

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Other things you need to know this week:

• This week, our Drama Queen in Chief blew up an endangered species: a bipartisan bill.  Adam Kinzinger explains why.

• Kinzinger is also still doing his “day in review”, which it now seems will be dubbed “The Kinzinger Report”.  He had a pretty good episode on Monday, covering Trump’s increasing dementia, the reflecting pool “vandals”, and Tulsi Gabbard’s bizarre cult connection.

• Brian Tyler Cohen’s “Just Another Day” for Saturday covers Trump’s “Great American Fair”.  It’s exactly as silly as it sounds.

• Even More News covers people getting 30 – 100 year sentences for protesting ICE.  Chilling stuff.

• If you happen to live in Wisconsin, you should probably watch this “breaking” Strict Scrutiny video.  At under 20 minutes, it’s a fantastic—and fantastically informational—capsule of how the rightwing nutjobs are going after your supreme court judges.

• If you want a deeper dive into the recent Supreme Court shenanigans, a couple of my streams crossed recently when Kate Shaw from Strict Scrutiny showed up on Hasan Minhaj Doesn’t Know.  The interview is pretty great, but even if you only watch the first 8½ minutes you’ll learn a hell of a lot.

• More Perfect Union has a fantastic video on the scam that is fintech non-banks.  This is why the answer to the question “how much money should I keep in my PayPal account?” is another question: how much can you afford to lose?

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What, not enough hope for you right in the opening bit?  Very well.  This week, a US District Judge ruled in favor of independent journalist Katie Phang.  Phang, a former mainstream journalist—and, prior to that, a lawyer—who, like so many of her colleagues, left (or was ousted) amid corporate meddling, had decided back in April to sue the Department of Justice for not fulfilling the terms of the Epstein Transparency Act.

You remember the Epstein Transparency Act, right?  That’s the one that Trump fought so hard to squash, eventually succumbing to political pressure and claiming he’d supported it all along.  His actions towards the 4 Republicans who joined with Democrats to force the discharge petition seem to belie that though: Greene resigned from Congress, Boebert had a crucial water pipeline for her state vetoed, Mace lost her gubernatorial bid when Trump endorsed a challenger, and Massie lost his primary for re-election when Trump did the same to him.  Still, the Act was passed, and signed into law, so the administration’s strategy quickly changed to ... just ignore it.

Deadlines have continued to come and go, with little movement.  The law says that only victims’ names may be redacted, but millions of documents were released with the victims’ names clearly visible and the alleged perpetrators’ names redacted.  And there are, allegedly, nearly 3 million more documents that are simply ... missing.  The DoJ has tried everything, from “they don’t exist” to “they exist, but they’re all duplicates” to “they’re about a whole different guy named Epstein”, but so far no one is buying it.

And that includes Katie Phang, who I rarely reference in these Reports (basically only once, back in week 55).  But she does good journalism, and I watch her sometimes.  And, with her legal background, she came up with an interesting approach to getting these missing documents released.  See, the main problem with any sort of court case to hold the DoJ’s feet to the fire is one of standing—standing being that legal doctrine of who has the right to bring the case.  Congress could certainly claim that right, since they passed the law that the DoJ is ignoring, but that seems pretty unlikely.  Could just any ordinary citizen claim to be harmed by the failure to follow the law?  Not likely.  But Phang had a different approach: she’s a journalist, you see, and she can’t do her job if the DoJ doesn’t provide those documents which they are legally required to provide.  She’s suffering economic harm due to the illegality.  That gives her standing.  Or so the theory goes: the DoJ, obviously, claimed it was bullshit.  But the judge agreed with Phang and, on Friday, issued a preliminary injunction that, by July 2nd, Blanche had provide a few, specifically enumerated documents, unredacted, or provide legal justification for why he couldn’t, within the bounds of the law.  Which is going to be quite tough to do, I’m thinking.

Watch the video so Katie can explain it herself, but I suspect that Blanche is either going to have to pony up, or start ignoring the courts again.  I’m betting on the latter, myself: I mean, what is the court going to do if he doesn’t provide the documents? issue an arrest warrant for the Acting Attorney General?  Seems unlikely.  But even an ignored court order is worthy of hope, if it’s against the Trump regime and so ironclad that the only thing they can do is ignore it.  They already tried arguing for extensions and got shot down.  So I’m curious what will happen come July 2nd.  I doubt it will be everything we want, but it should at least be interesting.