"[I]t is entirely possible that we will run a repeat of 2020, when the outcome of a narrow election was clouded by accusations of fraud, and MAGA was hellbent on retaining control."

"In 2026, however, we face a president who has surrounded himself with sycophants and yes men, with years left in a term that has already been marked by grotesque lawlessness and abuses of power."

Writes David French, in "This Is What’s Keeping Me Up at Night" (NYT gift link).

A Trump defender "could point to a prior president, maybe there was a Nixon thing here, maybe there was a Carter thing here, a Clinton thing here, a couple of Obama things here...."

"And they'll say, aha, here's this is analogous or this is analogous or this is analogous. And then they expand and extend and move way beyond that precedent. But then when challenged on it, they can go back and say, well, Clinton did X or Obama did Y. Now two things are true at once. Number one, Clinton often did X or Obama often did do Y.... That doesn't excuse Donald Trump at all. And it doesn't mean that... what Donald Trump is doing is the same level of wrongness. It can be more wrongness. But what he does tactically and what he tries to do legally, which often doesn't fly, but what often flies tactically, especially with his base, is he's constantly pulling from these prior examples that are scattered all throughout modern American history.... [I]f you're an administration that is pulling all of the wrongdoing from say five previous administrations, putting it under one administration and then amplifying all of it, then you do have an issue.... But guys, political fandom should be over, let's not do this, okay?"

Said David French in the new episode of "Advisory Opinions," "All the Things Wrong with Trump’s Billion-Dollar Fund."

The whole discussion there is very good, examining many legal issues and precedents. I'm just selecting that one thing, which is something I've observed again and again. It's not Trump's way to say it stops with me, I see what's wrong, and I'm going to set us straight and get back to what is soundly legal and in line with the intent of the Framers. That might seem to fit his slogan "Make American Great Again," but that's not what he does. He's in the middle of a big fight, and he's going tit for tat and beyond. He's one of those guys who say "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

Of course, that's Obama's line — "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" — but he was paraphrasing the Sean Connery character in "The Untouchables":

: 

"Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

"Here’s a thought experiment: imagine Instagram, but every single post is a video of paint drying."

"Same infinite scroll. Same autoplay. Same algorithmic recommendations. Same notification systems. Is anyone addicted? Is anyone harmed? Is anyone suing? Of course not. Because infinite scroll is not inherently harmful. Autoplay is not inherently harmful. Algorithmic recommendations are not inherently harmful. These features only matter because of the content they deliver. The 'addictive design' does nothing without the underlying user-generated content that makes people want to keep scrolling.... If every editorial decision about how to present third-party content is now a 'design choice' subject to product liability, Section 230 protects effectively nothing...."

Writes Mike Masnick, in "Everyone Cheering The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Against Meta Should Understand What They’re Actually Cheering For" (TechDirt).

I found that because David French links to it in "Don’t Cheer Too Hard for the Facebook Verdicts." French writes: "It’s quite possible that these verdicts will be overturned or heavily modified on appeal. But that process can take years. In the meantime, there will almost certainly be many more trials and many more verdicts that will put social media companies under pressure to increase their own censorship and their own controls over free speech online."

"We've seen it since the 1960s.... Police violence lands on this country in a tinderbox fashion."

"And so what is so important for leaders to do in that circumstance is: to obviously lament the lives lost, pledge an independent transparent investigation, and pledge to... seek justice no matter where it leads.... It strikes me that the exact opposite of that is what has occurred. And  immediately after [Renee Good] was killed, she was called a domestic terrorist, very publicly. There are people who then accuse the cop of murder, very publicly, right off the bat. That is pouring gasoline on this situation, and it's horrific.... This incredible rush to judgment results in fixed positions about complicated matters.... And then... there's this assertion, well, this is completely your fault because... when a federal officer gives you instructions, you abide by them and then you get to keep your life. No, no, no, no. That is not what a free society says. We should respect officers... but it is simply not the case that... your right to your life depends on compliance with federal officials.... It's dangerous to drive away from the police. You should not drive away from the police. But under no circumstances is America a country where the command should be obey the men and women in uniform or your life is forfeit. That's not the standard of the United States of America."

Says David French on the new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast (transcript and audio at Podscribe).

ADDED: If you are questioning the usage in the phrase "or your life is forfeit," know that C.S. Lewis used in in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" (full text at Gutenberg):

"After hearing all of you talk about this, I'm even less sure of how this case will come out than I went in."

"I felt far more confident before I heard the oral arguments. I felt less confident, but still, you know, I was where I was going into this conversation and now I'm leaving, throwing my hands in the air. I do think, however, in that big picture part that when you think about Chevron doctrine... that the executive branch agencies are going to have less power to define their own scope of power.... And at the same time, I think they will give the President more power over his personnel that you don't want sort of complete vertical power in an executive branch that then also has a lot of horizontal power to get extra legislative power.... So, Mr. President, you have complete control of your executive branch and also we've taken away some of the powers of the executive branch — I think would be the best outcome of this term...."

Said Sarah Isgur at the end of the Advisory Opinions podcast yesterday, summing up after moderating a high-quality conversation about the oral argument in the tariffs case.

"[N]o matter the direction of the tragedy, the end result is the same — the right grows angrier at the left, and the left grows angrier at the right...."

"This line of thinking leads in one direction — rationalizing extreme measures in response."

Writes David French in "There Are Monsters in Your Midst, Too" in the NYT.

My ellipsis makes the repetition of the word "direction" seem awkward, but I wanted to highlight directionality.

Since I'm quoting so little of that column, I'm expending one of my gift links on it so you can see the context. 

"And so on the one hand, we have the absolute radical pathological demoralization of young men. And then we have the insistence that although all that masculinity is toxic and patriarchal..."

"... that's precisely what young women should pursue. And so they pursue that in some ways, displacing young men, but more detrimentally for themselves, squandering their youth on service to the evil corporate world — bizarrely enough, given that it's a leftist trope — and the demolition of their, not only of their fertility, but the probability of their... participation in... the long-term partnership of marriage. So, I mean, you can hardly imagine a more toxic brew than that."

Said Jordan Peterson in his podcast talking to the NYT columnist David French. The episode is called "When Does Masculinity Become Toxic?" Here's the Podscribe link (for text + audio). 

The meaning of "And so they pursue that in some ways" might be a little difficult to catch, but it's clear in the context, that he means that women are out in the "evil corporate world" pursuing the kind of career success that they also associate with toxicity in the male.

The conversation continues into a Daily Wire episode, "The $20 Million Mistake Democrats Made with Young Men." You need a subscription for that. I've got one, but there's no transcript to quote, so... maybe a word about that later. Why $20 million?

"Under what theory of the constitution does a single marxist judge in San Francisco have the same executive power as the Commander-in-Chief elected by the whole nation to lead the executive branch?"

Tweet Stephen Miller, quoted by David French in "Trump Is Coming for Every Pillar of the State" (NYT). 

French continues:

As Miller put it in a press briefing last month, “The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president.” He is the only elected official who represents the whole of the American people, and he embodies the people’s general will....  

Trump and his team are furious at the federal judiciary, but they’re to blame for their own legal struggles. Trump has issued a host of poorly drafted executive orders. Trump’s administration has snatched people off the streets without adequate due process. The so-called Department of Government Efficiency is unilaterally wrecking agencies that were established by Congress, usurping Congress’s primacy in America’s constitutional structure.

It is not the judiciary’s fault that Trump has chosen to attack the constitutional order, and it is hardly the case that he’s losing only to liberal judges....

"There is certainly enough anger in the Democratic Party to create its own Tea Party. Democrats loathe Republicans..."

"... just as much as Republicans loathe Democrats, but there are important cultural differences between the parties that make a Democratic Tea Party less practical. For one thing, the Democratic turn toward more-educated voters means that the Tea Party’s anti-elitism and anti-intellectualism would be a poor fit for millions of Democrats.... Do Democrats think embracing Tea Party rage is the path back to power? Do they believe they can control that intense anger, once it’s unleashed?....  The Tea Party became a slave to its own rage. No fury was too great — no contempt was too deep — for the Democratic foe. And now we endure a presidency motivated by vengeance and spite. Opposition is necessary. Anger is natural. Courage is indispensable. But under no circumstances will we be better off if another Tea Party takes the political field."

Writes David French, in "The Last Thing Democrats Need Is Their Own Tea Party" (NYT).

"I also think it’s important to acknowledge that, as much as I detest Trump the man, there are sides of the MAGA movement that deserve respect."

"I don’t think of it as a collection of unadulterated bigots. Most Trump voters I know are decent people who don’t like being condescended to by a morally smug and self-serving elite that fails to see the many ways in which the federal government fails ordinary people. I also think Trump’s voters see things that too easily escape the notice of Trump’s haters, whether it was the farce of many of the Covid rules and restrictions or the double standards by which Trump’s opponents claim to be defending democracy while using every trick in the book to put him in prison."

Said Bret Stephens, in "A Second Trump Term? Three Conservative Columnists Unpack What Could Happen" (NYT). The other 2 columnists are Ross Douthat and David French.

Douthat invites French to say something nice about MAGA. French says:

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality."

Wrote C.S. Lewis, quoted by David French, in "Four Lessons From Nine Years of Being 'Never Trump'" (NYT).

That's a free-access link, so you can see for yourself what 4 lessons French learned.

But I liked the C.S. Lewis quote in the abstract. It's so abstract! The "highest reality," eh?

And now, this blog has a theme today: reality. This is only the second post of the day, but the first post was about a NYT column called "Could Eminem Snap Gen X Voters Back to Reality?"

Is there a sense — at the NYT and elsewhere — that reality is at stake, that it's out there, eluding us, and we need to struggle to get a grip on it, and we are losing?

I am reminded of Trump's saying — on the Joe Rogan podcast — that when he became President, "it was very surreal." But: "When I got shot, it wasn't surreal. That should have been surreal. When I was laying on the ground, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew exactly where I was hit.... I knew exactly what happened.... With the presidency, it was a very surreal experience.... And all of a sudden I'm standing in the White House, and it was very, very surreal...."

I am reminded of Elon Musk's "There's no truer test than courage under fire."

And: "Reality, what a concept!"

"Under traditional targeting principle... [the] pager attack... passes that basic test with flying colors.... It might be the most precise targeted strike [on] a military force embedded in a civilian population in the history of war.

Says David French, applying the United States's DOD Law of War Manual, in the new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast, "The Legality of Israel’s Beeper Attack" (audio at transcript at Podscribe)(I've slightly edited the transcript to match the audio).

Under traditional targeting principles, which require necessity, distinction, and proportionality, necessity means: Is there a military need for this? Distinction means: Are you attacking only military targets? And proportional is: Are you using no more force than is necessary to accomplish your legitimate military aim?

This pager attack under that construct passes that basic test with flying colors.

"Emil Bove, a defense lawyer, is suggesting that the prosecutors, in their proposed jury instructions, has shifted their theory of the case."

"It sounds like he’s talking about the state election law that underlies the felony business records charges against Trump. Justice Merchan doesn’t seem to agree, but in any case, he says, the prosecution’s proposal for jury instructions holds no weight at the moment. It is only a proposal. 'Just relax,' Merchan tells the defense lawyer, as he continues to argue. Nothing, he signals, has been determined yet. Bove continues to argue. He can tell that the judge is frustrated, but it’s clear that Bove is, too. If he believes that the prosecution changed its theory of the case in these final weeks, it would help to explain why he’s irate."

From the NYT's Live Updates of the Trump trial (free access link).

How can it still not yet be determined what law defines the crime?! 

Is it possible that Justice Merchan said "Just relax" to the defense lawyer because he knows that, in the end, he will hold the prosecution to account for failing to define the crime? I know, it's much more likely that Merchan said "Just relax" because it's irritating to listen to an agitated lawyer, even when, as here, outrage is part of his argument.

ADDED: David French addresses this problem in "The Trump Trial Is Disturbing on So Many Levels" (NYT):

"There is a long and honorable history of civil disobedience in the United States, but true civil disobedience ultimately honors and respects the rule of law."

"In a 1965 appearance on 'Meet the Press,' the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described the principle perfectly: 'When one breaks the law that conscience tells him is unjust, he must do it openly, he must do it cheerfully, he must do it lovingly, he must do it civilly — not uncivilly — and he must do it with a willingness to accept the penalty.' But what we’re seeing on a number of campuses isn’t free expression, nor is it civil disobedience. It’s outright lawlessness. No matter the frustration of campus activists or their desire to be heard, true civil disobedience shouldn’t violate the rights of others. Indefinitely occupying a quad violates the rights of other speakers to use the same space. Relentless, loud protest violates the rights of students to sleep or study in peace. And when protests become truly threatening or intimidating, they can violate the civil rights of other students, especially if those students are targeted on the basis of their race, sex, color or national origin."

Writes David French, in "Colleges Have Gone off the Deep End. There Is a Way Out" (NYT).

"I’d been a part of the pro-life movement my entire adult life... But now I’m left wondering how much of the movement was truly real."

"How much was it really about protecting all human life? And were millions of ostensibly pro-life Americans happy with pro-life laws, only so long as they targeted 'them' and imposed no burden at all on 'us'?

Writes David French, in "The Great Hypocrisy of the Pro-Life Movement" (NYT). He's looking at the reaction to the Alabama Supreme Court decision that treated IVF embryos like in utero embryos under the state’s wrongful death statute.

Pro-lifers "caved, almost instantly, on a core philosophical element of the movement — the incalculable value of every human life no matter how small — and the movement is now standing by or even applauding as Trump is turning the Republican Party into a pro-choice party, one more moderate than the Democrats, but pro-choice still...."

"Why Did the Supreme Court Wait So Long to Decide to Set the Trump Criminal Immunity Case for Full Hearing and Argument?"

"It Likely Means No Trial for Trump on Election Subversion Before the Election."

Rick Hasen asks and speculates at Election Law Blog.

Hasen quotes the Supreme Court's order:

The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

The new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast begins with a discussion of the cert grant, and co-host David French observes that the motion for a stay would have required the Court to opine on the likelihood of success on the merits. The Court avoided that by granting cert. 

The request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari came from Special Counsel and reflects the interest in speeding things up. The Court granted that request, but those who want speed wanted the cert grant denied. Now that cert is granted, the speed demons criticize any taking of time. The Court should be neutral and at least has self-interest in appearing neutral. It shouldn't be for or against speed — rushing or dragging its heels.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kevin surprises me with "Rushing or dragging? That cannot be allowed":

"Why is the political right so hostile to Ukraine?"

"It seems like the kind of freedom-fighting, Western-tilting country they’re supposed to adore."

Asks Gail Collins, in "The Conversation" at the NYT.

Her interlocutor, Bret Stephens, answers:

Our colleague David French offered what I think is the smartest answer to your question in a recent column. It comes down to this: general nuttiness connected to sundry Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden conspiracy theories, plus a belief that Putin (a former K.G.B. agent) somehow represents manly Christian values in the face of effeminate wokeness, plus a kind of George Costanza 'do the opposite' mentality in which whatever Biden is for, they must be against."

"The hosts seem to pride themselves on making [the podcast] 'Advisory Opinions' a venue for 'abject legal nerdery,' separate from partisan politics..."

"When the Colorado Supreme Court issued a ruling, in December, that blocked Trump from the Republican primary ballot, [Sarah] Isgur and [David] French convened an 'emergency pod' to discuss the case. French argued that the court was probably correct to disqualify Trump, in light of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that former officeholders who have 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' after taking an oath of office are ineligible to serve. Isgur, by contrast, was wary. 'The whole point of the Fourteenth Amendment was to strip the states of power, because they had, y’know, not behaved well,' she said—the Amendment was ratified three years after the end of the Civil War. 'So the idea that we then empowered each state to decide who’s qualified to be on the ballot seems insane to me.' But both were dismayed by the idea that Republicans might be able to retaliate by disqualifying Biden, perhaps by claiming that he had failed to protect the country from invading immigrants. 'Give me an effing break,' French said during a recent episode, coming about as close as he ever does to cursing. Isgur reacted as if she had just unwrapped a thoughtful birthday gift. 'Wow,' she said. 'I got an "effing" from David!'"

Writes Kelefa Sanneh, in "Sarah Isgur’s Majority Report/On 'Advisory Opinions,' the lawyer and former Trump Administration spokesperson argues that the Supreme Court is good, even—or especially—in its current incarnation" (The New Yorker).

I have a tag already for David French. He's a NYT columnist. I'll make a tag for Sarah Isgur. I hadn't noticed her until this New Yorker profile came out, and now I've listened to a podcast and a half, and I intend to keep listening. Nice work! Listen to them here.

"Enough. It’s time to apply the plain language of the Constitution... without fear of the consequences. Republics are not maintained by cowardice...."

"You don’t have to be a lawyer to comprehend those words. You simply need some basic familiarity with American civics, the English language and a couple of common-sense rules of thumb. First, when interpreting the Constitution, text is king. If the text is clear enough, there is no need for historical analysis. You don’t need to know a special 'legal' version of the English language. Just apply the words on the page. Second, it’s crucial to understand that many of the Constitution’s provisions are intentionally antidemocratic.... Yes, it is undemocratic, exactly as it was intended to be...."

David French expounds on legal interpretation in the NYT, in "The Case for Disqualifying Trump Is Strong."

"For decades now, we’ve watched as campus administrators from coast to coast have constructed... a network of speech codes, bias response teams, safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions..."

"... that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students. When, as a student at Harvard Law School, I was booed and hissed and told to 'go die' for articulating pro-life or other conservative views, exactly zero administrators cared about my feelings. Nor did it cross my mind to ask them for help. I was an adult. I could handle my classmates’ anger. Yet how sensitive are administrators to student feelings under other circumstances? I had to chuckle when I read my colleague Pamela Paul’s excellent column on the Columbia School of Social Work and she quoted a school glossary that uses the term 'folx.' Why spell the word with an 'x'? Because some apparently believe the letter 's' in 'folks' renders the term insufficiently inclusive. I kid you not...."The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.... "

Writes David French, in "What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech" (NYT).

French concludes (and I agree): "[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech.... The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship. It’s true liberty. Without that liberty, the hypocrisy will reign for decades more."