Will Donald Trump ever face justice for the events surrounding the January 6th attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol? Or will justice be delayed so long that justice will eventually be denied? These are now open questions, after the Supreme Court has injected more months of delay into the process.

There is plenty of blame to go around here. America's judicial system itself is a good start, where judges are not constrained by any clock and are free to set schedules far off into the future if they feel so inclined. Consider that Trump was indicted on the third of August last year, but even without all the appeals and delays the trial was initially scheduled for March 4th (next week, in other words). That's seven months of delay right from the get-go. The prosecution had suggested the start of January for the trial to take place, but the judge tacked on an extra two months right from the start.

All of that is considered normal. It's actually a fairly fast-paced schedule, in terms of the usual pace of the federal courts. The courts also defer to the appeals process, which resulted in Trump's case being halted in its tracks at the beginning of December, when Trump filed his presidential immunity claim with the appellate court. The case has remained frozen ever since.

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When he was elected to his leadership role, my initial reaction to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson's ascension was that the odds of him still being speaker beyond Valentine's Day were only about 50-50. Here we are at the end of February, and he's still speaker... but those odds might catch up to him soon. Congress has been punting the budget bill repeatedly since the start of last October, and they're lining up in punt formation once again. This time, however, it will be a very short punt and might actually end up with a budget (or at least part of one) being passed and signed into law by President Joe Biden as early as next week. Hey, stranger things have happened, right?

Sorry for the snarkiness, but reporting on this endless cycle of ineptitude begins to grate, after a while. Johnson initially punted the budget deadline (which, if reached without a budget in place, will trigger a government shutdown) to early-to-mid January. Then he punted again, which is where we find ourselves now. For some inexplicable reason, Johnson insisted on a two-part deadline, with only part of the federal budget due by this Friday night and the other parts (the bigger parts) due the following Friday. But -- due in no small part to the insanely-generous vacation schedule Congress keeps -- this was never going to be realistic. So now they are talking about punting both deadlines again, but this time only for a matter of a few weeks.

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Michigan is holding its primaries today, and the political media's main focus seems to be on the people who won't be voting for the two main candidates in the race. On the Republican side, the question is not whether Donald Trump is going to win or not (he is) but on how many people will vote for Nikki Haley, who is still clinging on to relevance. On the Democratic side, the question is not whether President Joe Biden is going to win or not (he is) but on how many people mark their ballot "uncommitted," in protest over his policies towards Israel and the Gaza Strip. When everyone already knows which two horses are going to win, to put this another way, then they've got to find something else to talk about.

The 2024 presidential election is unusual in a number of ways, but perhaps the biggest is that it is essentially a race between two incumbent presidents. Joe Biden, of course, sits in the Oval Office. Donald Trump, though, used to sit there and wants to sit there again. Only once in American history has a president won a non-consecutive term -- normally losing candidates never even make another attempt. So the dynamic between a president and the ex-president he defeated is rather unique for America to contemplate. But what it also means is that the outcome of the primary season has been a foregone conclusion for months now. Both Biden and Trump are cruising to their respective parties' nomination.

Since this is a boring thing to write about (what else is there to say other than that previous sentence, really?), the pundits seek stories elsewhere. The problem, however, is that nobody really knows what people are going to do. There aren't exactly good prediction models to use for such a unique situation.

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Democrats are beginning to widen their political message in a way that could prove to be a big winner for them not just in November but for years to come. So far, the fallout from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has been overwhelmingly positive for Democrats, since the majority of Americans actually favor abortion rights for all women. And now Democrats have the clear opportunity to link a number of other things to the proven political winner abortion rights has turned out to be. In fact, they should adopt a new slogan: "It's not just about abortion."

It's also about in-vitro fertilization. And contraception. And the right of a pregnant woman facing a medical emergency not to have to approach death before she can get treated by a doctor. Republicans will not be satisfied until they have molded American law to conform with their own personal religious beliefs, and this is not some academic hair-splitting -- it is going to affect millions of women's lives for the worse. It has real-world consequences, and some of them are horrific or at least intensely unpopular.

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Because this week had a federal holiday at the start of it, Congress is off on vacation for two entire weeks. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

It's not as if they don't have anything to do, either. When they return, the Senate will hold the first impeachment trial for a sitting cabinet member ever (although "trial" may be overstating it, since it may be over before it even begins, with a simple vote to dismiss the nonsensical articles of impeachment the House finally was able to pass), the House will be under pressure to pass some sort of military aid for Ukraine before their soldiers are reduced to fighting with pointy sticks, and Congress will be staring at yet another government-shutdown deadline at the end of the week. Those are just the big things on the congressional plate, mind you. But after all their hard work (at not getting anything done on time), they all needed two weeks of relaxation, obviously.

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I am playing hooky from politics today, because right in the middle of my usual writing time there will be a cosmic event streamed live. For the first time since 1972, a vehicle launched from the United States of America will attempt a "soft landing" on the Moon. "Soft landing" means it's going to try to land rather than just crashing into the Moon's surface. This is a historic occasion, made even more so by the fact that the spacecraft was launched by a private company, on top of a different private company's rocket. The event will be streamed live by NASA, but unlike the last American landing on the Moon (Apollo 17, which touched down on December 11, 1972) the mission is being carried out completely by private companies.

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T. S. Eliot wrote a poem that seems entirely appropriate to quote from today, since it aptly sums up the Republican effort in the House of Representatives to find something -- anything! -- to use to impeach President Joe Biden. After more than a year of digging, they have found less than nothing. Their one crown jewel of an accusation was brought by a man who is now being charged with lying about the entire thing to the F.B.I. Which is why the final lines of "The Hollow Men" seemed appropriate to quote (emphasis in original):

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

Or you can go back to the beginning of the poem, if you'd like a description of the Republicans mightily trying to make their fantastical dark vision somehow true:

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

As I said, it just seems appropriate.

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It is a rare event, but every so often I have to fully agree with a Republican. I was going to write this today anyway, begging for the same thing (for broader reasons), so this definitely caught my eye. Here is Representative Chris Smith from New Jersey, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee (which just introduced a foreign aid and border security deal as an alternative to the Senate-passed "foreign-aid-only" bill), advising President Biden to publicly go on offense over Ukraine military aid right now:

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[Program Note: Since it is a federal holiday and all, I decided to take today off and run a few errands. So I am running this column again, due to its timeless nature (pun intended -- calendarless, maybe?). Or if you remember it from years past and are bored, you can check out the Washington Post today, where intrepid historians have uncovered a remarkable linkage -- the story of how President Joe Biden's great-great-grandfather was pardoned by none other than President Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War. In any case, we hope everyone (who gets the day off, that is) has a wonderful holiday, no matter what you call it!]

Originally published February 17, 2014

Happy Presidents' Day to all!

Well, to all who live in Hawai'i, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, and Vermont, at the very least. These are the states which officially recognize today as "Presidents' Day." Unlike other federal holidays, however, there is much disagreement and controversy surrounding the holiday. Not so much the holiday itself, but over what to call it (and when to celebrate it). In states such as California and Alaska (and, notably, the state of Washington), the apostrophe moves and it is known as "President's Day." This can be read as either snubbing all the other presidents (since the holiday originally celebrated one president's birthday), or celebrating the presidency itself (or the day of the president, to put it another way). But even without such grammatical gymnastics, the day has plenty of other official titles. Some states such as Michigan and New Jersey dispense with the apostrophe altogether and just call it "Presidents Day." Some states get flowery ("Recognition of the birthday of George Washington" in North Dakota), and some get inclusive ("Lincoln's and Washington's Birthday" in Montana, "Lincoln/Washington/Presidents' Day" in Arizona, and "Washington and Lincoln Day" in Utah), and some even throw in a local personage to the mix ("George Washington's Birthday and Daisy Gatson Bates Day" in Arkansas). Wikipedia lists ten separate official state titles for the holiday, in fact.

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That headline comes from the end of an aphorism that goes back to the time of the ancient Greeks: "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine." Today, the wheels of justice just ground out a penalty of $355 million for Donald Trump, for committing serial fraud in his New York businesses -- which we certainly found to be an "exceedingly fine" result of the case (an "exceedingly fine fine," maybe?). The $355 million can now be added to the $88 million Trump is already on the hook for, after losing two other civil cases (the defamation cases brought by E. Jean Carroll). Plus, in today's ruling, two of Trump's children were fined $4 million each, as well as a $1 million fine for another member of the Trump Organization (making it a $364 million penalty, in all). This was the capstone to a week watching the slow grind of multiple court cases Trump is currently ensnared in, so we thought it was an appropriate place to start our column this week.

The biggest other Trump legal news of the week is that for the first time in history, an ex-president will face a criminal trial for paying "hush money" to a porn star. Actually, every word after "trial" in that previous sentence is superfluous in a way... but it's still fun to point out.

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