Progressive Political News

A new poll demonstrates that, in this pivotal election year, abortion rights could play a key role in determining who will win the White House and control of Congress.
Several states across the country are set to hold referenda regarding abortion rights and access to the procedure. Those elections will have tremendous consequences for the states themselves, but could also motivate more supporters of abortion rights (and thus, Democratic-leaning voters) to turn out in key states and congressional districts.
Access to abortion is a globally recognized human right, and should not necessarily be determined by a vote. Nevertheless, following the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturn of longstanding federal abortion protections, the ballot booth has become a key tool to defend access to the right, including in some unexpected, conservative places, like Ohio and Kansas.
According to the Economist/YouGov poll that was published this week, a majority of Americans (61 percent) believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. Thirty-two percent said it should only be legal when a person’s life is at risk due to a complicated pregnancy, while just 8 percent said the procedure should be banned entirely.
Respondents were split on whether abortion should be decided individually by states or the federal government, with each idea receiving 44 percent support. But even though voters were divided in their beliefs on that question, most said they would back a national right to abortion being passed by Congress, with 55 percent saying so and only 34 percent opposed to such a proposal.

When asked whether they would back a national abortion ban, the vast majority were opposed, with only 21 percent saying they’d support such a ban and nearly 7 in 10 (69 percent) saying they’d oppose it.
Ballot measures could also drive more Americans to vote, the poll found. A quarter of Americans (26 percent) said an abortion rights ballot initiative would make them more likely to participate in the election this fall — a small but significant number, particularly for House and Senate races where the outcome could come down to a small fraction of voters, including the presidential election.
Nearly half (49 percent) of participants in the poll said they would vote to protect or expand abortion access, while just a quarter of voters (26 percent) said they’d vote to restrict it. Seventeen percent said they were unsure of how they would vote.
The Economist/YouGov polling numbers come as several states are advancing referenda measures that would change their constitutions to include abortion rights protections for their residents.
At least three states have amendment proposals set for voters to decide on in November. In Florida, voters will decide whether abortion should be protected up to the point of fetal viability (usually around 22-25 weeks of pregnancy), with additional protections after that time in cases when a person’s life or health is at risk. (That ballot initiative, unlike many others, will require 60 percent of voters to support it in order to become an official amendment.) In Maryland, voters will decide on whether to define “reproductive freedom” in the constitution to include the right to make “decisions to prevent, continue or end one’s own pregnancy.” And New York voters will decide whether to prohibit the denial of rights based on a number of factors, including people’s “pregnancy [or] pregnancy outcomes.”
Nine other states could also potentially see an abortion rights measure on their ballots, including Arizona and Colorado, where advocates in both states say they’ve attained enough signatures to put amendment proposals on the ballot.
The inclusion of abortion rights measures on state ballots likely means that more Democratic-leaning voters will participate overall, which could be important in swing states and districts where Democratic and Republican candidates are currently running neck-and-neck.
Even President Joe Biden, whose record on abortion hasn’t always been stellar, is embracing the issue as one that will define his potential reelection to the White House, portraying himself as a defender of reproductive rights while emphasizing how former President Donald Trump, the GOP nominee for president this year, has diminished those rights.
Trump, who campaigned on overturning Roe v. Wade in 2016 and still openly celebrates his appointment of three right-wing Supreme Court justices who made that happen, has in recent weeks tried to portray himself as more moderate on abortion, claiming that he now believes the procedure should be a “states’ rights” issue. According to a recent Washington Post report, his decision to take that stance is likely motivated by politics rather than personal conviction, as it’s evident that abortion is a losing issue for Republicans across the country.
Biden, meanwhile, is trying to frame Trump as disastrous for abortion rights, noting that, were it not for the Trump presidency, abortion would likely still be a protected federal right across the entire U.S.
“Let’s be real clear: There’s one person responsible for this nightmare, and he’s acknowledged it and he brags about it: Donald Trump,” Biden said at a campaign event in Tampa earlier this week.
Biden has also expressed support for changing the Constitution to protect abortion rights.
“It should be a constitutional right in the federal Constitution, a federal right, and it shouldn’t matter where in America you live,” Biden said in the same speech.

As I stood with hundreds of other activists from thirty-two countries in Istanbul, Türkiye, our trainers briefed us on what we might expect during the trip to Gaza. “We have to be ready for every possibility,” they said, as we started an intense non-violence training program required to join the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. 

The best scenario, they added, is that our three ships—one carrying 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid and two carrying passengers—will reach Gaza and accomplish our mission. Another scenario would be that the Turkish government might cave to pressure from Israel, the United States, and Germany, and prevent the boats from even leaving Istanbul. This happened in 2011, when the Greek government buckled under pressure and ten boats were stalled in Greece.

With our boats currently still docked in Istanbul, we fear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose party recently suffered a crushing blow in local elections, is vulnerable to any economic blackmail that Western powers might be threatening.

A third possibility is that the ships take off but the Israelis illegally hijack us in international waters, confiscate our boats and supplies, arrest and imprison us and, eventually, deport us. 

This happened on several other voyages to Gaza, one of them with deadly consequences. In 2010, a flotilla of six boats was stopped by the Israeli military in international waters. They boarded the biggest boat, the Mavi Marmara. According to a United Nations report, the Israelis opened fire with live rounds from a helicopter hovering above the ship and from commando boats along the side of the ship. In a horrific display of force, nine passengers were killed, and one more later succumbed to his wounds. 

To try to prevent another nightmare like that, potential passengers on this flotilla must now undergo rigorous training. We watched a video of what we might face—from extremely potent tear gas to ear-splitting concussion grenades—and they told us that the Israeli commandos would be armed with weapons with live rounds. Then we divided up into small groups to discuss how best to react, non-violently, to such an attack. Do we sit, stand, or lie down? Do we link arms? Do we put our hands up in the air to show we are unarmed? 

The most frightening part of the training was a simulation replete with deafening booms of gunfire and exploding concussion grenades and masked soldiers screaming at us, hitting us with mock rifles, dragging us across the floor, and arresting us. It was indeed sobering to get a glimpse of what might await us. Equally sobering are Israeli media reports indicating that the Israeli military has begun “security preparations,” including preparations for taking over the flotilla.

Everyone embarking on this mission deserves tremendous credit. The largest group of passengers are from Türkiye, and many are affiliated with the humanitarian group The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (known as IHH), an enormous Turkish NGO with eighty-two offices throughout the country. It has consultative status at the United Nations and does charity work in 115 countries. Through IHH, millions of supporters donated money to buy and stock the ships. Israel, however, has designated this widely respected charity as a terrorist group. 

The next largest group comes from Malaysia. Some of the participants are affiliated with another large humanitarian group called MyCARE. The organization, known for helping out in emergency situations such as floods and other natural disasters, has contributed millions of dollars in emergency aid to Gaza over the years.

There are about thirty-five participants from the United States. Leading the group, and key to the international coalition, is seventy-seven-year-old retired U.S. Army colonel and State Department diplomat Ann Wright. After quitting the State Department in protest over the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wright has put her diplomatic skills to good use in helping to pull together a motley group of internationals. Her co-organizer from the United States is Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American attorney who is a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and ran for Congress in 2022. Arraf was key to organizing the very first flotillas that began in 2008. So far, there have been about fifteen attempts to get to Gaza by boat, only five of them successful. 

What brings us together is our outrage that the world is allowing this genocide in Gaza to continue, and a burning desire to do more than we have been doing to stop people from being murdered, maimed, and starved.

The incredible breadth of participants is evident in our nightly meetings, where you can hear clusters of groups chatting away in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Malay, French, Italian, and English in diverse accents from Australian to Welsh. The ages range from students in their twenties to an eighty-six-year-old Argentine medical doctor.

What brings us together is our outrage that the world is allowing this genocide in Gaza to continue, and a burning desire to do more than we have been doing to stop people from being murdered, maimed, and starved. The aid we are bringing is enormous—it is the equivalent of more than 100 trucks—but that is not the only purpose of this trip. “This is an aid mission to bring food to hungry people,” says Arraf, “but Palestinians do not want to live on charity. So we are also challenging Israeli policies that make them dependent on aid. We are trying to break the siege.”

Israel’s vicious attacks on the people of Gaza, its blocking of aid deliveries, and its targeting of relief organizations have fueled a massive humanitarian crisis. The killing of seven World Central Kitchen workers by Israeli forces on April 1 highlighted the dangerous environment in which relief agencies operate, which has forced many of them to shut down their operations. 

The U.S. government is building a temporary port for aid that is supposed to be finished in early May, but this is the same government that provides weapons and diplomatic cover for the Israelis. And while President Joe Biden expresses concern for the suffering Palestinians, he has suspended funding to UNRWA, the main United Nations agency responsible for distributing aid in Palestine, after Israel made unsubstantiated claims that twelve of its 13,000 employees in Gaza had participated in the October 7 attacks. 

Given the urgency and danger this moment presents, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition is entering rough and uncharted waters. We are calling on countries around the world to pressure Israel to allow us “free and safe passage” to Gaza. In the United States, we are asking for help from our Congress, but having just approved another $26 billion to Israel, it is doubtful that we can count on their support. 

But, even if our governments do put pressure on Israel, will it pay attention? The country’s defiance of international law and world opinion during the past seven months indicates otherwise. 

But still, we will push forward. The people of Gaza are the wind in our sails. Freedom for Palestine is our North Star. We are determined to reach Gaza with food, medicines, and, most of all, our solidarity and love.

Right-wing allies of former U.S. President Donald Trump are reportedly crafting a plan to give the executive branch control over Federal Reserve policy decisions, an effort that comes as the presumptive GOP nominee continues to signal his authoritarian intentions for a potential second term.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that former Trump administration officials and other supporters of the ex-president “have in recent months discussed a range of proposals, from incremental policy changes to a long-shot assertion that the president himself should play a role in setting interest rates.”
“A small group of the president’s allies — whose work is so secretive that even some prominent former Trump economic aides weren’t aware of it — has produced a roughly 10-page document outlining a policy vision for the central bank,” the Journal reported. “The group of Trump allies argues that he should be consulted on interest-rate decisions, and the draft document recommends subjecting Fed regulations to White House review and more forcefully using the Treasury Department as a check on the central bank. The group also contends that Trump, if he returns to the White House, would have the authority to oust Jerome Powell as Fed chair before his four-year term ends in 2026.”
During his first four years in the White House, Trump repeatedly criticized Powell — whom the former president appointed in 2017 — over the central bank’s interest rate policy and insisted he had the authority to oust the Fed chair before the end of his term. The Fed is an independent body subject to limited congressional oversight.
“I have the right to do that,” Trump said in 2019 of ousting Powell. “I’m not happy with his actions, I don’t think he’s done a good job.”

The Fed, still under Powell’s leadership, has since jacked up interest rates to their highest level in decades in an attempt to combat inflation — an approach that progressive lawmakers and economists have criticized as misguided, arguing that prices were elevated primarily by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and corporate profiteering and that hiking rates would harm workers. (Progressives have historically pushed for Fed reforms that would make the powerful central bank more accountable to the public.)
Late last year, Trump said interest rates were “too high” but did not say he would pressure the central bank to lower them, saying: “Depends where inflation is. But I would get inflation down.”
More recently, Trump suggested the Fed’s indication that rate cuts are coming in the near future as inflation cools is a political ploy to “help the Democrats.”
“It looks to me like he’s trying to lower interest rates for the sake of maybe getting people elected, I don’t know,” Trump said in a Fox Business appearance in February.
Economist Paul Krugman predicted in his New York Timescolumn earlier this year that “Trumpist attacks on the Fed for cutting interest rates are coming.”
“What we don’t know is how the Fed will react,” Krugman wrote. “In a recent dialogue with me about the economy, my colleague Peter Coy suggested that the Fed may be inhibited from cutting rates because it’ll fear accusations from Trump that it’s trying to help Biden. I hope Fed officials understand that they’ll be betraying their responsibilities if they let themselves be intimidated in this way.”
“And I hope that forewarned is forearmed,” he added. “MAGA attacks on the Fed are coming; they should be treated as the bad-faith bullying they are.”
The Journal reported Thursday that “several people who have spoken with Trump about the Fed said he appears to want someone in charge of the institution who will, in effect, treat the president as an ex officio member of the central bank’s rate-setting committee.”
“Under such an approach, the chair would regularly seek Trump’s views on interest-rate policy and then negotiate with the committee to steer policy on the president’s behalf,” the newspaper continued. “Some of the former president’s advisers have discussed requiring that candidates for Fed chair privately agree to consult informally with Trump on the central bank’s decisions… Others have made the case that Trump himself could sit on the Fed’s board of governors on an acting basis, an option that several people close to the former president described as far-fetched.”
According to earlier Journal reporting, Trump’s team has discussed several possible replacements for Powell, including former White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett and Arthur Laffer, a former Reagan adviser and notorious tax-cut enthusiast.
Trump allies’ plot to help the former president exert control over Fed policy if he’s reelected in November provides further insight into the presumptive Republican nominee’s likely approach to a second term.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump — who is facing 88 charges across four criminal cases — has vowed to be a dictator on “day one,” wield federal authority to go after his political opponents, launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” and use the U.S. military to crack down on protests.
“If a president is truly determined to make himself a dictator, the question at the end of the day is whether the military and other force-deploying agencies of the federal government are willing to go along,” Josh Chafetz, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, told The Washington Post in a recent interview. “If they are, there’s not much Congress or the courts could do about it.”

Donald Trump’s first criminal trial is underway and three others are in the pipeline. The former president has more than half a billion dollars in civil penalties already accrued against him for both defaming E. Jean Carroll (whom a civil court previously found him liable for sexually assaulting) and for corrupt business practices. As a result, the GOP presidential candidate is facing huge legal bills — which have cost him nearly $90 million so far — and financial penalties. And so, Trump being Trump, he has taken to both creative and coercive methods to raise money.
Political action committees backing the candidate have spent millions of dollars on Trump’s legal fees. Trump’s leadership PAC alone, Save America, which he created immediately after his election defeat in November 2020, has spent almost $60 million on his attorneys’ bills since early 2023, but it is now struggling to replenish its funds. Another PAC, MAGA Inc., which got off the ground with $60 million in funding from Save America, has been stepping into the breach, keeping Save America solvent by paying back $5 million a month. But that money will dry up by the summer, once the $60 million is fully repaid; and so, Trump is looking elsewhere for steady flows of cash to meet his steady flows of legal trouble. His agreement with the Republican National Committee prioritizes sending money from big donors to the PACs that are paying the legal bills before sending additional dollars to the party. And, perhaps unbeknownst to them, his small donor followers are also footing Trump’s gargantuan legal bills. Ten cents of every dollar the Trump campaign raises online goes to the Save America PAC so that they can continue paying the candidate’s army of attorneys.
None of this is a surprise. Trump has spent his adult life caroming from one unsavory money-making scheme to the next. Think the ill-fated Trump University — which a court found lured students to spend huge amounts of money on workshops that promised to teach them the secrets of success in the real estate world, but failed to do so; and which offered up “gold elite” classes for a cool $35,000. Think his use of hotels and golf resorts as lures to bring in cash from overseas governments and business tycoons wanting access to him during his presidency. Think his bizarre victory speech in 2016, a portion of which he spent hawking products ranging from Trump steaks (which were already discontinued) to Trump vodka. Think his recent efforts to hawk an Americana version of the Bible and other, equally tacky, marketing efforts to sell $399 pairs of gold sneakers emblazoned with the Trump logo. The list is, if not endless, then at least excruciatingly long.
Given these tendencies and his need for instant hard cash, it’s no great surprise that Trump’s campaign recently sent out a somewhat extortionary letter to downballot GOP candidates hoping to use the MAGA leader’s name and likeness in their fundraising appeals, demanding that they send over to the campaign at least 5 percent of their takings or cease and desist from referencing Trump in their communications. Of course, the letter continued, it would be seen in an even more positive light if they sent a higher tithe than that, and such acts of generosity would be sure to be pointed out to those high up in the party’s hierarchy. If that was the carrot, then a similar letter last year was yet another iteration of the stick: In that letter, Trump’s team warned the National Republican Campaign Committee and a bevy of GOP consultants that if they used his name in their pitch letters without his consent he might withdraw his support for the political candidates that they backed. The unconditional loyalty that Trump demands of his followers is, it appears, one directional; for the loyalty that Trump offers up in exchange is, always, purely transactional.
A charitable way of interpreting this is that Trump — whose movement is increasingly messianic and many of whose followers view him as literally having been chosen by God for his leadership role — is now tithing his followers. After all, tithing is common in a diverse array of religions — many ancient Mediterranean cultures, including the Phoenicians and some of the ancient Greek polities, tithed; Medieval peasants had to give 10 percent of their farm produce to the Catholic church; Mormons today are still expected to pay up that 10percent tithe on their earnings; in the Islamic world, a 2.5 percent Zakat is the norm.

A more reasonable way of understanding this, without attributing to Trump the tithing powers of an institutional church, is that it’s basically an extortion racket. Trump has such a lock on the Republican Party that he knows his endorsement can make or break a candidate — and he’s seeking to monetize that, refusing to allow candidates to associate their name and image with his, in their outreach to voters, unless they agree to send his political organization a commission on their fundraising trawls.
Like so much of the tawdriness of Trumpism and the Trump political machine, this sort of pay-to-play politics isn’t exactly original. It’s the sort of unsubtle tactic that the Tammany Hall mob that controlled New York City in the 19th century would have been all too familiar with. It’s the kind of arm-twisting raw use of power that leaders such as Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon — with his Committee to Re-Elect the President slush fund — would have loved. Yet, Trump is taking this a whole lot further. He is using all the tools of modern politics — from social media to the mass rally to expensive and exclusive fundraising dinners — to concentrate the Republican Party’s money machine not for the greater good of downballot GOP figures but simply to help him out in his legal woes. And the Republican Party, supine now in its fealty to a man who behaves more like a mobster than a democratic political leader, is doing all in its diminished powers to oblige.

Here’s a conversation a friend who uses a wheelchair told me she overheard outside the entrance of Disneyland a few years ago:

Mom: Okay, Suzie. This time you ask for a wheelchair.

Suzie: No, I don’t wanna ask for a wheelchair! Make Billy do it!

Billy: No way! I asked for a wheelchair last time!

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, there were a few reasons why kids who weren’t in wheelchairs were jealous of me because I was. They were jealous because kids in wheelchairs weren’t expected to do stuff like go to church or Sunday school. Church and Sunday school weren’t wheelchair accessible anyway. (Later, when I was in high school, older kids were jealous of me because being in a wheelchair meant I was never going to be drafted into the military and dragged off to someplace like Vietnam.) Other kids were also jealous of me because kids in wheelchairs got to cut to the front of the lines at Disneyland.

But then Disney cracked down. This came after media reports surfaced in 2013 about rich people who were hiring disabled people to accompany them and their kids to Disney World and paying them up to $130 an hour so that they didn’t have to wait in line.

My reaction to this was, “Where do I sign up?” If being in a wheelchair could get me a free trip to Disney World and up to $130 an hour, that sounded like a sweet gig to me. A guy’s got to make a living somehow.

But Disney was all indignant about it, probably because they figured it was costing them lots of money. That’s the kind of thing they get all worked up about. So in 2013, Disney instituted a new system: Disabled folks could sign up for a ride or attraction and then be assigned a return time so they could go do other things rather than waiting in line. 

Recently, Disney announced it was revamping its access policy yet again because obtaining a pass for not waiting in line because of a disability had become the most widely-requested service at its parks. Starting this summer, the company announced, those seeking this accommodation will be questioned by medical professionals in an attempt to determine if they do indeed qualify.

Pretty soon, the only people who will be able to skip the lines at Disney’s theme parks will be Super Bowl Most Valuable Players. You know how after every Super Bowl Disney people with video cameras chase after the MVP and get him to triumphantly proclaim, “I’m going to Disneyland”? And then, a few days later, you see footage of the MVP at Disneyland having a grand old time.

I bet Disney doesn’t make those guys wait in line. 

To me, the magic of going to Disneyland or Disney World was that it was one of the few situations where having a disability was an asset. But the Disney people seem determined to take that away. Their idea of treating disabled people fairly is to make us wait in line like everybody else.

Pretty soon, this will be the conversation you’ll overhear outside of the entrance of Disneyland:

Mom: Okay, Suzie. This time you pretend like you’re the Super Bowl MVP.

Suzie: No, I don’t wanna pretend like I’m the Super Bowl MVP! Make Billy do it!

Billy: No way! I pretended like I was the Super Bowl MVP last time!

Joseph Fischer took the day off of work on January 6, 2021. Instead of patrolling the streets as an officer of the North Cornwall Township Police Department in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, he decided to join the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol.  

Two months later, Fischer was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts, including charges of assaulting police officers defending the Capitol, disorderly conduct, and obstruction of an official proceeding. 

According to the Justice Department, before traveling to Washington, D.C., Fischer sent text messages to various acquaintances that established his criminal intent. In one set of texts, he declared: “If Trump don’t [sic] get in we better get to war; Take democratic [C]ongress to the gallows . . . Can’t vote if they can’t breathe . . . lol.” In another text sent to his boss in North Cornwall, he wrote: “I might need you to post my bail . . . it might get violent.” 

During the riot, the DOJ alleges, Fischer recorded a cellphone video in which he can be heard exhorting the mob to “Charge!” After he succeeded in entering the building, Fischer yelled “Motherfuckers” as he and other rioters crashed into a police line. Footage taken by one of the defending officers shows at least one was struck to the floor during the melee. Fischer remained inside the building for four minutes before being forcibly removed. 

The outcome of the case will hinge on how the Supreme Court interprets a single word contained in the obstruction statute invoked against Fischer. 

While Fischer’s guilt on all counts might appear obvious, he caught a break when his case was assigned to federal District Court Judge Carl Nichols. A member of the conservative Federalist Society and a former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Nichols was nominated to the bench in 2019 by former President Donald Trump. In March 2022, Nichols dismissed the obstruction charge against Fischer on “textualist” grounds, holding the statute used to prosecute Fischer applied to the destruction of documentary evidence, but not to violent acts. 

The issue is now pending before the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the case on April 16. Judging from the transcript of the arguments, Fischer may well prevail. 

The outcome of the case will hinge on how the Supreme Court interprets a single word contained in the obstruction statute invoked against Fischer. The statute, which is codified in section 1512 (c) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, reads: 

“(c)Whoever corruptly—

(1) alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding; or

(2) otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

The question is whether the word “otherwise” expands the reach of the statute to any acts, including violent protests, intended to disrupt the January 6 joint session of Congress, or whether the law should be limited to evidence tampering. 

To answer the question, the justices engaged in an intensive 100-minute colloquy with Fisher’s attorney Jeffrey Green and U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar about “textualism” as a tool of statutory interpretation. 

As legal commentators have noted, the Supreme Court’s current conservative majority has long embraced textualism. Broadly defined, textualism argues that statutes should be understood according to the plain meaning of their terms, regardless of Congress’ intent or purpose in enacting the statutes, and without regard to any practical consequences.

Section 1512 (C) was enacted in 2002 in the aftermath of the Enron financial fraud scandal as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Green told the justices the statute was aimed at cleaning up corporate accounting practices, and that federal prosecutors had never before sought an indictment under the law for anything besides evidence tampering. In his view, “otherwise,” as used in the statute, means evidence tampering in ways other than the direct destruction or mutilation of evidence, such as the creation of fake documents. 

Prelogar, on the other hand, argued that the plain meaning of “otherwise” referred to more than just tampering with documents, as long as perpetrators intend to interfere with, delay, or impair an official proceeding. 

It is the position of the justices, of course, that will count. Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to be on Fischer’s side, remarking that because the word “otherwise” appears in subsection (C) (2), it must be read as limited by the preceding subsection (C) (1), which only applies to evidence tampering. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—who together with Roberts would comprise a decisive five-vote majority—also voiced support for a narrow reading of the law. 

A ruling in Fischer’s favor will have broad implications not only for Fischer but for some 350 other insurrectionists who have been charged with obstruction.

Liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor offered the opposite interpretation. Kagan argued the word “otherwise” was “meant to function as a backstop” to fill in “gaps” in the law to prohibit obstructive acts beyond Enron-like tampering. Sotomayor quipped that if you go to a theater and see a sign saying, “You will be kicked out of the theater if you photograph or record the actors or otherwise disrupt the performance,” no one should be surprised if someone gets kicked out for “yelling.”

Somewhat surprisingly, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined forces to suggest a middle ground, observing that “otherwise” could include efforts to obstruct the arrival of the true Electoral College vote certificates on January 6, or the creation of false certificates. 

A ruling in Fischer’s favor will have broad implications not only for Fischer but for some 350 other insurrectionists who have been charged with obstruction. Roughly 170 insurrectionists have already been convicted of obstruction and could have their cases reopened. 

A ruling for Fischer could also derail part of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election-interference prosecution of Donald Trump. Two of the four felony counts in Trump’s indictment allege obstruction and conspiracy to obstruct the January 6 joint session. Those counts could be saved by the statutory interpretations suggested by Justices Barrett and Jackson, but that is by no means certain.  

Jewish U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a scathing statement Thursday pushing back against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s characterization of burgeoning protests on American university campuses as “antisemitic,” declaring, “It is not antisemitic to hold you accountable for your actions.”
“No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months, your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 — 70% of whom are women and children,” said Sanders (I-Vt.). “It is not antisemitic to point out that your bombing has completely destroyed more than 221,000 housing units in Gaza, leaving more than one million people homeless — almost half the population.”
“Antisemitism is a vile and disgusting form of bigotry that has done unspeakable harm to many millions of people,” continued Sanders, who lost family members to the Nazi Holocaust. “But, please, do not insult the intelligence of the American people by attempting to distract us from the immoral and illegal war policies of your extremist and racist government. Do not use antisemitism to deflect attention from the criminal indictment you are facing in the Israeli courts.”
No, Mr. Netanyahu. It is not antisemitic or pro-Hamas to point out that in a little over six months your extremist government has killed 34,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 77,000 – 70% of whom are women and children.You will not distract us from this immoral war. pic.twitter.com/oDaiyU4ipD— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 25, 2024
Sanders’ statement came a day after Netanyahu falsely described student protesters speaking out against Israel’s catastrophic war on Gaza as “antisemitic mobs” and likened the demonstrations to “what happened in German universities in the 1930s.”
“It has to be stopped,” Netanyahu said of the campus protests, which have faced violent police crackdowns.

Students at Columbia, Princeton, the City College of New York, the University of Texas at Austin, Northwestern, and other schools nationwide are demanding that the institutions divest from any companies that are participating in or benefiting from Israel’s war on Gaza and publicly support an immediate cease-fire.
On Wednesday, hundreds of UT Austin students walked out of their classrooms and marched to the main lawn of the campus before police officers with horses and riot gear arrived on the scene, arrested dozens, and assaulted some protesters.
“One woman said she saw a large police officer place his entire body weight to detain a young woman protesting,” The Texas Tribunereported. “Law enforcement was also seen kneeling on individuals’ backs and necks, pulling their hair, and in one case punching a protester in the nose.”
Jeremi Suri, a professor of history at UT Austin, told Al Jazeera that contrary to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s claim, there was “nothing antisemitic” about Wednesday’s protests.
“These students were shouting ‘free Palestine,’ that’s all,” said Suri. “They were saying nothing that was threatening. And as they were standing and shouting, I witnessed the police — the state police, the campus police, the city police — an army of police almost the size [of] the student group… many were carrying guns, many were carrying rifles, and then, within a few minutes, this group of police stormed into the student crowd and started arresting students.”
In his statement Thursday, Sanders emphasized that criticism of Israel’s massively destructive assault on Gaza cannot be conflated with antisemitism.
“It is not antisemitic to note that your government has obliterated Gaza’s civilian infrastructure — electricity, water, and sewage,” said Sanders, who earlier this week voted against a foreign aid package that included $17 billion in additional U.S. military assistance for Israel.
“It is not antisemitic to realize that your government has annihilated Gaza’s healthcare system, knocking 26 hospitals out of service and killing more than 400 healthcare workers,” he continued. “It is not antisemitic to condemn your government’s destruction of all of Gaza’s 12 universities and 56 of its schools, with hundreds more damaged, leaving 625,000 students with no education.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments today regarding the “absolute” presidential immunity claims made by former President Donald Trump in the federal case surrounding his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election outcome.
The highly anticipated hearing featured a clear rejection of the idea that former presidents can enjoy absolute immunity when it comes to their actions while in office. But conservative justices seemed to question what outcomes could come about if they ruled in favor of the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has said that Trump’s specific claims in the case should be outright rejected.
The DOJ’s special counsel specifically alleges that Trump committed federal crimes by creating a fake slate of electors to interfere in the Electoral College, took actions on January 6, 2021, that inspired a mob of his loyalists to disrupt an official proceeding, and engaged in other egregious behavior that warranted a prosecutorial response. Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, have claimed that his actions were all within the realm of official acts by a president, and as a former president, he should not be prosecuted for them.
The election interference case could have huge implications for this year’s presidential contest, as Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. Polling indicates that a conviction against Trump would sink support for him in significant ways, but with the Court hearing the case this late (and potentially delaying a trial date even further afterward), the possibility that a final outcome could be determined before the election is very unlikely.
Both liberal and conservative justices on the Court pressed Trump lawyer D. John Sauer on “absolute immunity” claims, offering extreme hypotheticals to demonstrate how disturbing a ruling in the former president’s favor would be. Conservative justices also grilled special counsel lawyer Michael Dreeben about where the line on immunity should be drawn.

For almost three hours, all nine Supreme Court justices took part in asking questions of the lawyers. Their focus seemed to be on the future, not necessarily the case at hand.
Trump’s lawyer Sauer started the hearing off, but was immediately interrupted by Justice Clarence Thomas, a staunch conservative who regularly issues opinions that are favorable toward the former president.
Thomas asked where the idea of a former president having absolute immunity for their official acts came from. Sauer responded by citing Nixon v. Fitzgerald, a decision from the Supreme Court in 1982 that dealt with civil lawsuits but also applies to criminal charges.
Chief Justice John Roberts followed up shortly after by asking whether an ex-president could be charged with bribery upon exiting office, if, while they were president, they accepted a large sum of money from someone who wanted to be appointed an ambassador. Sauer sought to sidestep that question by noting that bribery isn’t an official act, but Roberts quipped back that appointing ambassadors is.
“So how does your official acts or the official acts border boundary come into play when it’s going to be official, assuming that the president is innocent?” a skeptical Roberts asked.
Liberal bloc Justice Sonia Sotomayor offered another hypothetical: what should happen to an ex-president who attempted to assassinate a political opponent?
Said Sotomayor, directing her question to Sauer:

There are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against. … If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person and he orders the military or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?

Sauer answered by saying “it would depend on the hypothetical” but ultimately said yes, it could be considered an official act for which a president receives immunity. Only if they’re impeached first, Sauer contended, can an ex-president be held accountable for such actions.
“Why?” Sotomayor responded. “He’s doing it for personal reasons. He’s not doing it, like President Obama is alleged to have done it, to protect the country from terrorists; he’s doing it for personal gain. Isn’t that the nature of the allegations here?”
Justice Samuel Alito seemed to agree with Sotomayor’s questioning, saying that it would be “implausible” for an ex-president to be immune from prosecution after ordering Navy SEAL Team Six to assassinate a rival. Justice Elena Kagan offered another hypothetical, questioning whether a former president who traded nuclear secrets to a foreign adversary should be immune under Sauer’s reasoning.
Although most of their questioning had to do with hypotheticals, the justices also delved into the specifics of the case at hand. Justice Amy Coney Barrett listed the offenses that were made by the DOJ, then asked if Trump was immune from each and every one of them. Sauer conceded that Trump was not immune from all of them.
Sotomayor addressed the “fake electors” plot to disrupt the Electoral College.
“What is plausible about the president insisting and creating a fraudulent slate of electoral candidates? Assuming we accept the facts of the complaint on their face, is that plausible that that would be within his right to do?” she asked.
Sauer responded: “Absolutely.”
Sotomayor continued. “[Even] knowing that the slate is fake? Knowing that the slate is fake, that they weren’t actually elected, that they weren’t certified by the state, he knows all those things?”
If the justices seemed willing to reject the “absolute” immunity claims made by Sauer, they were equally concerned about dismissing immunity claims altogether, with conservatives on the bench in particular grilling the special counsel lawyer Dreeben over the extent to which it might work.
Alito questioned whether reducing immunity could lead to difficulties for the peaceful transfer of power in the future, from one administration to the next.
“If an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election, knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement, but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” he asked Dreeben.
Alito also asked if a mistake by an ex-president could be prosecuted.
“I understand you to say, well, you know, if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he’s subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else. You don’t think he’s in a special, a peculiarly precarious position?” he said.
Dreeben responded by saying that presidents have lawyers helping them decide on matters all of the time — that, if their actions resulted in an illegal outcome, they would know about that possibility. Dreeben also said a mistake by a president wouldn’t result in charges from the DOJ.
Said Dreeben:

He has had access to legal advice about everything that he does. The laws of the United States and the Constitution of the United States, and making a mistake is not what lands you in a criminal prosecution.

At times, there were clear disagreements from the justices. Sotomayor, for example, sought to contradict Alito’s hypothetical claim that, without immunity standards, a departing president was in danger from a prosecutorial attack by an incoming one.
“A stable democratic society needs the good faith of its public officials, correct? … And that good faith assumes that they will follow the law?” she asked Dreeben.
“The ultimate check is the good will and faith in democracy,” Sotomayor added.
Ultimately, the justices were well aware that their final ruling on the case would have implications for future presidents.
“I’m not concerned about this case. But I am concerned about future uses of the criminal law to target political opponents based on accusations about their motives,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch, adding that he and his colleagues were “writing a rule for the ages.”
Barrett took note of the finality of the outcome in their ruling. But she also indicated that she could not rule that absolute immunity was allowable. When Dreeben, for instance, said that Sauer’s arguments were a “radical proposal,” Barrett responded by saying, “I agree.”
The questions and answers from the nine justices and the two lawyers on Thursday indicated that Trump’s extreme stance will not be the prevailing opinion of the majority of the Court. However, a legal win for Trump is not necessarily incumbent upon whether the justices agree with his arguments, but rather what they do with the case from here. The strategy for Trump’s legal team has been (with this case and the others he faces) to delay the process, with hopes that he can win the presidential election this fall and become immune to prosecution once again, at least for the next four years.
There is a strong possibility that the Court, while disagreeing with Trump on the fundamentals, will render a ruling to delay the trial even longer by requiring lower courts to decide on more technical aspects of the case, including determining whether actions laid out in the indictment were official actions by Trump when he was president.
Legal experts sounded off on what they believed would ultimately happen.
“So far, the story here seems to be that at least three justices (Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh) seem inclined to send the case back to the lower courts for additional analysis,” said Kyle Cheney, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico. “That outcome would doom chances of Trump case going to trial this year and, if he wins the election, ever.”
“Ultimately, I do not think they’ll give Trump blanket immunity for all crimes. But the thing I’m listening for is ‘remand,’” said The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal, predicting the possibility before the hearing began. “I’m listening for Thomas, Alito, and Roberts to say that Trump may have *some* immunity…and send the case back.”
Even if the case isn’t remanded back to the district court, the Supreme Court could delay the trial in other ways — including not releasing the opinion in time for the trial to begin.
The justices could render an opinion at any point they choose, including, potentially, the end of the current term. The last day this year for decisions in cases heard this term is July 3, which, if they wait that long, will probably mean the case won’t be resolved by the presidential election in November.
“If they wait until the last day of the term, the window of getting tried before the election is practically closed, or close to it,” Randall D. Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and current law professor at George Washington University, told The Washington Post. “You may start before the election, but you may not finish it.”