RIP Sheila Oliver

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, a Democratic stalwart in the state's politics for decades, has died at the age of 71.

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver died Tuesday, one day after she was rushed to the hospital for an undisclosed medical issue.

"It is with incredible sadness and a heavy heart that we announce the passing of the Honorable Sheila Y. Oliver, Lieutenant Governor of the State of New Jersey," the Oliver family said in a statement. "She was not only a distinguished public servant but also our cherished daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and hero."

Oliver was 71 years old.

She had been serving as acting governor with Gov. Phil Murphy on vacation. The Democratic Senate President, Nicholas Scutari, took over as acting governor when Oliver was rushed to the hospital Monday.

Murphy remembered Oliver as a "trailblazer" in announcing her death.

"When I selected her to be my running mate in 2017, Lieutenant Governor Oliver was already a trailblazer in every sense of the word," Murphy said in a statement. "She had already made history as the first Black woman to serve as Speaker of the General Assembly, and just the second Black woman in the nation’s history to lead a house of a state legislature. I knew then that her decades of public service made her the ideal partner for me to lead the State of New Jersey. It was the best decision I ever made."

Former New Jersey governor and 2024 presidential candidate Chris Christie tweeted, "It is a sad day for NJ and for me personally."

"I will miss Sheila. She served as Speaker in my first term and we treated each other with kindness and respect," Christie said. "She was a great person and partner."

 

It's notable in today's age of blisteringly partisan politics that a Republican 2024 candidate like Christie would have anything nice to say about any Democrat in America at all. Again, meeting the absolute minimum standards for human decorum, I guess.

Oliver leaves behind a nearly three-decade legacy of service to the Garden State.

Born and raised in Newark, Oliver graduated from the city’s Weequahic High School before earning a sociology degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and a masters in planning and administration from Columbia University. She was an East Orange resident.

She later worked for a nonprofit social services organization and taught at Essex County College and nearby Caldwell University.

Oliver moved into politics when she was elected to the East Orange Board of Education, an office she held from 1994 to 2000. During that time, she served two years as vice president and ended her time as president of the board.

She concurrently served as an Essex County freeholder from 1996-99. And in between, she lost a bid for East Orange mayor by a mere 51 votes.

A few years later, Oliver moved up to Trenton. She was elected to the Assembly in 2003 and was chosen by her fellow Democrats to become the chamber’s 169th speaker in 2009.

Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, D-Passaic and chairwoman of the New Jersey Legislature Black Caucus, described Oliver as a beloved mentor and an inspiration.

“As a freshman entering the New Jersey General Assembly, I was fortunate to work alongside Lt. Governor Oliver. Having the privilege of witnessing her lead as Speaker of the Assembly had a powerful impact on me,” Sumter said. “Representation matters, and I was honored to have Lt. Gov. Oliver be my mentor and educate me on the history of the politics in the state of New Jersey and how to navigate through the Legislature.”

“Lt. Governor Oliver’s influence transcended generations and she paved the way for Black and Brown women to pursue higher office. She taught us the importance of being informed, skilled, and graceful,” Sumter said.

Oliver was the second woman after Marion West Higgins in 1965 and the second Black lawmaker, after S. Howard Woodson in 1974, to ascend to the powerful position. She was also the second Black woman in American history to lead a state legislative chamber, after Karen Bass of California.

 

That it took until 2009 to have just the second Black woman Speaker in a state legislature is ridiculous, but Oliver met that challenge -- and Chris Christie -- head on.

 

Here's to the fighters. Black Lives Still Matter.

One GOP Chris Out, One GOP Chris In

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart will resign from the House, citing health issues with his wife, Evie.

 

U.S. Rep. Chris Stewart plans to resign his seat in Congress. That announcement could come as early as Wednesday morning.

Multiple sources have confirmed to The Salt Lake Tribune that Stewart announced his plan to resign, citing ongoing health issues with his wife. It was unclear what those health issues may be.

First elected by Utahns in 2012, Stewart is serving his 6th term in Congress. In 2022, he won reelection over Democrat Nick Mitchell by over 30 percentage points.

Stewart will be the second member of Utah’s Congressional delegation to resign mid-term in the past six years. Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz gave up his seat in Congress in 2017 to become a pundit on Fox News Channel.

Picking a replacement for the remainder of Stewart’s term will require a special election. Once Stewart officially announces he’s resigning, Gov. Spencer Cox has seven days to set the primary and special election schedule. Under state law, those dates will be the same as this year’s municipal primary and general elections, unless the Legislature appropriates money to hold an election on a different date.

Utah’s 2nd congressional district stretches along the state’s western and southern borders, dissecting Great Salt Lake and running south to St. George. The district includes Utah’s southern portion of the Interstate 15 corridor and Zion National Park. It’s also the state’s largest district, covering more than 40,000 square miles — bigger than the entire state of Indiana.

Stewart’s resignation would temporarily reduce the GOP’s already slim majority in the House until his replacement is selected. There are currently 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats in the House. As it stands, Republicans can only afford to lose four votes when voting on legislation opposed by every Democrat. Stewart’s impending departure drops that number to three.

The congressman holds seats on the House Appropriations Committee and the House Intelligence Committee.

Stewart was widely believed to be preparing to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Mitt Romney. His forthcoming announcement, adding an open House seat to the mix, will likely scramble that calculation.

 

The more immediate result of this resignation means Kevin McCarthy's lifeline holding on to the House Speaker job just got that much shorter. It's unclear whether or not Stewart will stick around long enough to vote on the debt ceiling package. It's possible he may not, especially if he has any future political plans.

 

Meanwhile, another Republican Chris plans to get back into politics next week. 

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is expected to announce his 2024 Republican candidacy for president next Tuesday in New Hampshire, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Christie, 60, is a former close Trump ally who now calls the former president a "coward" and "puppet of Putin." He gives traditional Republicans a horse — but seems to have a narrow market in today's GOP.

Driving the news: Christie is expected to make the announcement at a town hall at Saint Anselm College at 6:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.

Here's what to expect from a Christie candidacy, per his team:

Being joyful and hitting a more hopeful note aimed at America's "exhausted majority.

Being authentic — a happy warrior who speaks his mind, takes risks and is happy to punch Donald Trump in the nose. Christie's recent interviews and New Hampshire town halls aim to recapture the brio of his 2009 governor's race.

Running a national race — "a non-traditional campaign that is highly focused on earned media, mixing it up in the news cycle and engaging Trump," an adviser said. "Will not be geographic dependent, but nimble."

 

We'll need to add "has no chance in hell even if Trump goes to jail."  

 

2024 Republican primary voters don't want a joyful, hopeful candidate who represents the "exhausted majority". They want one who will tirelessly wreak bloody vengeance against their perceived enemies in the Obama/Biden coalition, reducing us to powerless non-entities who won't dare raise a hand or a voice against their white supremacist theocratic "utopia" and couldn't if we wanted to.

They want war. Christie is about at threatening as a Jersey pork roll sammich.

It's About Suppression, Con't

For all the endless complaining that Republicans do about how voting by mail is "fraud", the GOP sure does like to steal elections.

Colorado Republican Party Chair Ken Buck, a U.S. representative from Windsor, pressured a local party official to submit incorrect election results to set the primary ballot for a state Senate seat, according to an audio recording of a conference call obtained by The Denver Post. 

“You’ve got a sitting congressman, a sitting state party chair, who is trying to bully a volunteer — I’m a volunteer; I don’t get paid for this — into committing a crime,” Eli Bremer, the GOP chairman for state Senate District 10, told The Post on Wednesday, confirming the authenticity of the recording. “To say it’s damning is an understatement.”

Buck says he was merely asking Bremer to abide by a committee decision. 

At issue is the Republican primary for the District 10 seat currently held by Sen. Owen Hill, who’s term-limited. State Rep. Larry Liston and GOP activist David Stiver both ran for it. To qualify for the November ballot via the caucus and assembly process, a candidate must receive 30% of the vote from Republicans within the district. 

During a district assembly in March, Liston received 75% of the vote and Stiver just 24%, according to documents filed later in Denver District Court. Stiver complained the election was unfair, and the issue was taken up with the state central committee, which agreed, Buck said in an interview Wednesday. 

The central committee consists of nearly 500 members, including elected officials and county officers. About 200 were on the line during an April 17 conference call in which the group voted to place Stiver on the ballot for the seat, even though he failed to receive 30% of the district’s votes. After the vote, Buck asked Bremer, the District 10 chair, whether he would comply with the committee’s decision. 

“Do you understand the order of the executive committee and the central committee that you will submit the paperwork to include Mr. Stiver and Mr. Liston on the ballot, with Mr. Liston receiving the top-line vote?” Buck said on the call. 

“Uh, yes, sir, I understand the central committee has adopted a resolution that requires me to sign a false affidavit to the state,” Bremer replied. 

“And will you do so?” Buck said. 

Bremer: “I will seek legal counsel as I am being asked to sign an affidavit that states Mr. Stiver received 30% of the vote. I need to seek legal counsel to find out if I am putting myself in jeopardy of a misdemeanor for doing that. ” 

Buck: “And you understand that it is the order of the central committee that you do so?”
Bremer: “I will consult with counsel. Yes, sir, I understand the central committee has ordered me to sign an affidavit stating that a candidate got 30% who did not. And I will seek legal counsel and determine if I am legally able to follow that.” 

Buck: “All right, Mr. Bremer, I understand your position; we will now move on.” 

Buck, a lawyer, told The Post on Wednesday that it has been the tradition in both parties for their committees to make such decisions.

Note here Buck isn't denying he basically committed a felony. His excuse is that COVID-19 makes elections hard and besides the Democrats do it too, so who cares?

But hey, the Supreme Court made it clear today that convicting state officials on fraud charges is no good.

The Supreme Court threw out fraud convictions on Thursday against two New Jersey officials involved in the "Bridgegate" political scandal, the George Washington Bridge traffic jam that rocked the administration of then-Gov. Chris Christie. 

Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Elena Kagan said that "for no reason" other than "political payback" the aides "used deception" to cut access lanes from Fort Lee, New Jersey, to the bridge. 

The move "jeopardized the safety of the town's residents," Kagan wrote, but concluded that "not every corrupt act by state or local officials is a federal crime." 

Bridget Anne Kelly, who served as an aide to Christie, and Bill Baroni, the deputy director of the Port Authority, were convicted for their roles in the scandal and ultimately sentenced to 13 and 18 months in 2017. Currently out on bond, they asked the Supreme Court to reverse their convictions.

The ruling is the latest example of the court narrowing the type of conduct by public officials that can be considered fraud under federal law. 

In recent years, the court has decisively narrowed the government's ability to charge public officials with federal crimes for corruption offenses, most notably in 2016 after former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell took hundreds of thousands of dollars from a businessman who wanted the governor to intervene on his behalf with state officials to benefit his business. 

"Once again, the Supreme Court has thrown out federal criminal convictions of public officials who, by their own admission, abused their power for corrupt and illegitimate purposes," said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law. 

"The harder question is whether Congress will respond to rulings like this one by expanding the scope of these laws, or whether we're going to end up with a world in which criminal liability for such nefarious conduct depends upon the color of one's collar," Vladeck added. 

Christie's aides argued that they were wrongly convicted and that prosecutors overreached when they charged them under various federal fraud statutes.
Kagan added that the aides' scheme did not aim to obtain money or property, and therefore they could not have violated wire fraud laws. 

In a statement to CNN, Christie says members of his administration were "dragged through the mud" since the case was first taken up by the Justice Department. 

"As many contended from the beginning, and as the court confirmed today, no federal crimes were ever committed in this matter by anyone in my administration. It is good for all involved that today justice has finally been done," Christie said.

So even if Buck was charged, corruption isn't a federal crime.  Colorado's state Supreme Court is refusing to hear the case for the same reason.

Finally, let's not forget that the Trump regime is now openly stating that it will sue Democratic states "into oblivion" to stop voting by mail.

President Donald Trump’s political operation is expanding its legal effort to stop Democrats from overhauling voting laws in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Republican National Committee and Trump reelection campaign are doubling their legal budget to $20 million as litigation spreads to an array of battleground states. With the virus likely to complicate in-person balloting in November, Democrats have been pushing to substantially ease remote voting restrictions — something the Trump campaign and RNC are aggressively fighting in the courts.

Trump, who has long been fixated on voter fraud, has taken a personal interest in the project. He is expected to discuss the legal maneuvering during a meeting with his political team Thursday.

The battle over voting laws — specifically Democrats' efforts to make it easier for people to vote remotely during the pandemic — has emerged as a key front in the general election showdown between the parties.

More than two dozen Republican operatives are focusing on the legal battles and have been closely coordinating with party officials at the state and local levels. The Trump campaign and RNC recently intervened in Nevada, where Democrats are pushing for the state to ease restrictions by mailing ballots to all registered voters. Republicans have also been active in New Mexico, where they fought back a similar Democratic-led lawsuit.

The legal skirmishing has also been taking place in such battlegrounds as Pennsylvania and Georgia. While Republicans say they are open to some changes amid the pandemic, they are opposed to many of the farther-reaching reforms Democrats are pursuing.

“We will not stand idly by while Democrats try to sue their way to victory in 2020,” said RNC chief of staff Richard Walters. “Democrats may be using the coronavirus as an excuse to strip away important election safeguards, but the American people continue to support commonsense protections that defend the integrity of our democratic processes.”

The RNC and Trump campaign initially announced in February that they would direct $10 million to legal fights. But the party, Walters said, is prepared to sue Democrats “into oblivion and spend whatever is necessary.”

Democrats have long pushed to ease voting restrictions. Marc Elias, a prominent election law attorney who is leading the party’s effort, said Democrats were currently focused on litigation in more than a dozen states, including Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Wisconsin. Many of the lawsuits, he said, involve expanding vote-by-mail rules.

He acknowledged, however, that the Republican Party’s massive investment is a hurdle.

“We’re not unrealistic about the fight that is ahead,” Elias said. “There is no question that Donald Trump and the Republican Party have made opposing voting rights a top priority for their campaign.”

We just have to accept that massive corruption and voter fraud by the GOP is standard in America, as one of the lawyers for the New Jersey plaintiffs argued.

"In an ideal world, public officials would always act solely in the best interest of the public," Roth argued. "But our world is decidedly not ideal, and politics is one of its inherent features, accepted as the cost of democratic accountability."

You play the game, you pay the cost.  Welcome to America.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Trump's new Emergency Inflatable Attorney General™ Matt Whitaker made his first major (and unconstitutional) move, declaring that the Trump regime can deny any and all asylum applications from anyone who has crossed the border illegally (despite international law saying otherwise) and that Dear Leader Trump has the final say in who is eligible to apply.

The Trump administration on Thursday rolled out a fast-track regulation that will restrict the ability of certain migrants to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border — a move that’s almost certain to trigger legal challenges and humanitarian backlash.

The administration issued an interim final rule that will bar certain migrants caught crossing the border between ports of entry. The regulation will be paired with a presidential proclamation that outlines the migrants subject to the asylum bar, administration officials said on a call with reporters. The officials would not detail who could be subject to the ban, but said more information likely would be revealed Friday.

The regulation seeks to “channel inadmissible aliens to ports of entry, where they would be processed in a controlled, orderly, and lawful manner,” according to a notice posted online Thursday afternoon.

In recent weeks, President Donald Trump has fixated on a group of Central American migrants trekking through Mexico en route to the United States. During a speech last week, Trump called the caravan an “invasion” and said asylum seekers would be turned away.

"This isn't an innocent group of people,” he said of the group, which includes many women and children. “It's a large number of people that are tough.”

Republican voters in Tuesday’s midterm elections cited immigration as one of the most important issues facing the country, according to exit polls. The announcement Thursday suggests Trump won’t ease up on his immigration crackdown, which dominated his first two years in office.

A senior administration official on Thursday said asylum seekers who cross between ports of entry are “choosing to break our laws as their first act upon entering the country“ and “depriving legitimate asylum seekers of a chance to have their cases heard.”

The official called the current influx of asylum seekers a “massive … almost historically unparalleled abuse of our immigration system.”

The plan is simple, round up everyone who crosses the border, deny them asylum, detain them in camps, and deport them.  It's cruel and illegal, period.  Trump doesn't care, because House Dems won't be in charge for another two months, Republicans in the House and Senate don't care, and the whole point is for this to go fast-track to SCOTUS where five Republican-appointed justices are waiting to sign off on it.

There is one wrinkle, however, and that is Matt Whitaker isn't eligible to be Acting AG in the first place.

Much of the commentary about Mr. Whitaker’s appointment has focused on all sorts of technical points about the Vacancies Reform Act and Justice Department succession statutes. But the flaw in the appointment of Mr. Whitaker, who was Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff at the Justice Department, runs much deeper. It defies one of the explicit checks and balances set out in the Constitution, a provision designed to protect us all against the centralization of government power.

If you don’t believe us, then take it from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, whom Mr. Trump once called his “favorite” sitting justice. Last year, the Supreme Court examined the question of whether the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board had been lawfully appointed to his job without Senate confirmation. The Supreme Court held the appointment invalid on a statutory ground.

Justice Thomas agreed with the judgment, but wrote separately to emphasize that even if the statute had allowed the appointment, the Constitution’s Appointments Clause would not have. The officer in question was a principal officer, he concluded. And the public interest protected by the Appointments Clause was a critical one: The Constitution’s drafters, Justice Thomas argued, “recognized the serious risk for abuse and corruption posed by permitting one person to fill every office in the government.” Which is why, he pointed out, the framers provided for advice and consent of the Senate.

What goes for a mere lawyer at the N.L.R.B. goes in spades for the attorney general of the United States, the head of the Justice Department and one of the most important people in the federal government. It is one thing to appoint an acting underling, like an acting solicitor general, a post one of us held. But those officials are always supervised by higher-ups; in the case of the solicitor general, by the attorney general and deputy attorney general, both confirmed by the Senate.

Mr. Whitaker has not been named to some junior post one or two levels below the Justice Department’s top job. He has now been vested with the law enforcement authority of the entire United States government, including the power to supervise Senate-confirmed officials like the deputy attorney general, the solicitor general and all United States attorneys. 

As former Attorney General Jeff Sessions's Chief of Staff, Matt Whitaker was never subject to Senate confirmation.  Therefore, Matt Whitaker cannot serve as Acting AG.  It reall is this simple, but again, Trump doesn't care.  This issue too will go before the Supreme Court, but I expect by then Trump will have an AG lined up (Kris Kobach, Trey Gowdy, and Chris Christie are some of the names I've heard) that will pass any confirmation tests with the GOP's even larger majority in January in the Senate with no problem.

The real issue is that Whitaker's job is to serve as the lightning rod to allow the worst of Trump's excesses to come to pass in the lame duck session, including all the moves against Mueller, since he knows Whitaker actually would have issues getting confirmed.  What becomes of the acts Whitaker authorized the DoJ to take, well, that will conveniently become moot when the new AG arrives.  All of it neatly becomes standard practice, Trump's picks to the Supreme Court will see to that.

And the whole mess will lurch forward.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Three stories on the plate for today in Mueller investigation news, first up yes, Attorney General Jeff Sessions's days are indeed numbered, and no, congressional Republicans aren't going to do a thing about it as long as they get Kavanaugh confirmed first.

President Trump, who levied extraordinary public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recent weeks, has privately revived the idea of firing him in conversations with his aides and personal lawyers this month, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

His attorneys concluded that they have persuaded him — for now — not to make such a move while the special-counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is ongoing, the people said.

But there is growing evidence that Senate Republicans, who have long cautioned Trump against firing Sessions, are now resigned to the prospect that he may do so after the November midterm elections — a sign that one of the last remaining walls of opposition to such a move is crumbling.

“We wish the best for him, but as any administration would show, Cabinet members seldom last the entire administration, and this is clearly not an exception,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in an interview Tuesday.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) told The Washington Post, describing the Trump-Sessions dynamic as “a toxic relationship.”

Added Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a longtime defender of the attorney general: “My sense is the fix is in.”

Getting rid of Sessions means the Saturday Night Massacre and end of the Mueller probe is now all but assured, the only question is when.  It would be a nightmare if it happened before the midterms, but after, well.  And that brings us to story #2, that White House Counsel Don McGahn is also on his way out.

Top White House officials and sources close to White House counsel Don McGahn tell Axios that McGahn will step down this fall — after Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, or after the midterms.

The big picture: That potentially puts a successor in charge of fielding a blizzard of requests or subpoenas for documents and testimony if Democrats win control of the House in the midterms. And if the White House winds up fighting special counsel Robert Mueller, an epic constitutional fight could lie ahead. 

• We're told that Trump has not formalized a successor.
• But McGahn has told a confidant he would like his successor to be Emmet Flood, a Clinton administration alumnus who joined the White House in May to deal with the Russia probe.
• Flood also served for two years during George W. Bush’s second term as his top lawyer handling congressional investigators.

A source familiar with Flood's thinking said: “The reason he can represent both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump is because he thinks these investigators come and basically put a target on their backs, trying to overturn every aspect of their lives searching for a crime."

Note that McGahn was the main reason Mueller wasn't immediately fired in June 2017.  If McGahn's departure comes in September or October instead of after the midterms, Trump may make his move on Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller sooner rather than later.  The Mueller investigation would have ended after just a month.

And that brings us to Story #3, a massive new Justice Department money laundering investigation, but the fugitive suspect has a whole hell of a lot of familiar Republicans on his defense team.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether a fugitive Malaysian financier laundered tens of millions of dollars through two associates and used the funds to pay a U.S. legal team that includes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and a lawyer who represents President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Jho Low, the Malaysian businessman, has been described in U.S. court filings as playing a central role in the alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from a Malaysian fund called 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

Malaysian authorities this week separately charged Mr. Low with money laundering in the case, which investigators suspect may be one of the biggest financial frauds in history. He has been moving around Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China in recent months, according to people with knowledge of his whereabouts.

Mr. Low was close to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Rajak, who unexpectedly lost an election in May and was arrested last monthin Kuala Lumpur. Mr. Najib has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering and criminal breach of trust in connection with the 1MDB scandal.

The Justice Department, in July 2016 and last year, filed civil lawsuits in federal court in California seeking to recover assets from Mr. Low and others including mansions, artwork and a yacht allegedly bought with 1MDB funds. It is now pursuing a criminal investigation in which Mr. Low, who has U.S. assets, is a target, these people said.

Chris Christie, former US Attorney, defending the biggest money laundering case in US history, huh.

The team of lawyers and consultants working for Mr. Low includes Mr. Christie, who briefly headed Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team; Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz ; Bobby Burchfield, a lawyer who has served as the Trump Organization’s outside ethics adviser; and Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party.

Mr. Christie is representing Mr. Low in the asset-forfeiture cases in California, a spokesman for the former governor said. “There has been no communication by Governor Christie with any other area of government on Mr. Low’s behalf,” the spokesman said, adding there has been “no inquiry made to him by the Department of Justice with regard to any other investigation regarding funding or otherwise."

A spokesman for Kasowitz Benson Torres, Mr. Kasowitz’s New York law firm, confirmed the firm represents Mr. Low in Justice Department matters. “Here, as with all of our clients, our job as attorneys is to represent and vindicate our clients’ interests; and here, as with all of our non-pro-bono clients, we are paid for the legal services we provide,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Nothing to do with Trump's money laundering, except for all the Republicans making sure the guy goes free.

Now that's interesting.  Put this all together and I see Trump, once Kavanaugh becomes the fifth vote he needs on SCOTUS, doing whatever he likes and going straight to authoritarianism.

Stay tuned.

The Other Races Today

Virginia's gubernatorial race today has gotten a lot of coverage, but as Matt Yglesias reminds us, other state issues and several mayoral races will have a major impact on 2018 and 2020 politics.

National media coverage of Tuesday’s elections has focused fairly overwhelmingly on the governor’s race in Virginia, which seems to be close and features some interesting storylines about Ed Gillespie’s race-baiting electioneering tactics, which, if successful, will likely prove to be a model for Republicans nationwide. 

But the policy stakes outside Virginia — in the not-so-close gubernatorial election in New Jersey, a Washington state Senate special election, and a Maine ballot initiative to expand Medicaid — are equally high. These other races haven’t attracted as much attention because they’re less interesting from a horse-race perspective. The New Jersey race looks set to be a Democratic blowout, the state Senate special in the suburbs of Seattle is lightly polled but also seems to clearly favor Democrats, and the paucity of polling in Maine makes it hard to construct any kind of narrative. 

Yet Democratic victories in these three races have huge effects. An expected Democratic win in New Jersey would create a Democratic trifecta in a blue state — potentially unleashing a wave of progressive policymaking that’s been stifled by eight years of Chris Christie. Flipping Washington’s state Senate from a one-vote GOP majority to a one-vote Democratic majority will also create a Democratic trifecta; a narrow legislative margin but one that creates new opportunities when combined with Washington state’s stronger fiscal position. Medicaid expansion in Maine would be a huge deal for the estimated 70,000 Mainers newly qualified for the program and a shot in the arm to rural hospitals.

And this is big news because Dems getting full control of New Jersey and Washington State back means they'll be much better equipped to battle Trump regime nonsense going into next year and in 2020 when redistricting and the White House are both on the line.  Dems need all the help they can get.

Not to mention tens of thousands of Mainers getting access to health care, in a state that has been badly abused by the racist austerity idiocy of GOP Gov. Paul LePage.  A vote to expand Medicaid in the Trump era would send shockwaves through all 50 states, period.

Here's hoping that I have good news to report tomorrow as well.

Last Call For Bridge To Labor

Meanwhile, we know a bit more about Trump's quest for a new Labor Secretary, which is kind of difficult because rich CEOs are all terrible at convincing anyone they care about the guys making minimum wage.  It seems like Trump's next plan was simple: Pick a Republican who's such a loser, they'd jump at the chance.

President Trump offered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie the job of Labor secretary after a lunch meeting last week, Politico reported on Wednesday. 

The offer came as the president’s previous labor secretary pick Andrew Puzder’s nomination was in jeopardy. He eventually withdrew from consideration, and Trump quickly tapped Alexander Acosta for the job. 

Christie, who backed Trump’s presidential bid early on, served as the head of the president’s transition team until November, when he was replaced by Vice President Mike Pence. 

Still, the New Jersey governor and onetime GOP presidential candidate has been the frequent subject of rumors that he could be tapped for a post in the Trump administration. 

In an interview with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly earlier this month, Christie said he was not offered a job in Trump’s administration that would have made him consider leaving his current post as governor. 

“The fact is that I wanted to be the governor of New Jersey, and if the president had offered me something that really was compelling me to get to Washington, I would have made the sacrifice to do it,” Christie said. 

And while he ultimately turned down the Labor secretary offer, that position was one of several jobs Trump has offered to Christie, according to Politico.

Actually, I'm fairly sure Christie my end up with a higher approval rating than Trump pretty soon. Go figure, even facing Bridgegate and a possible indictment and a GOP that hates him now, Christie still figures he's in a better position than Trump, at least good enough to turn the man down for a cabinet position.

Think about that.

BridgeGate Over Troubled Water, Con't

NJ GOP Gov. Chris Christie, former presidential candidate, Trump's first choice for running mate, and current Trump transition team head, just got the November Surprise of his life.

Two former Chris Christie allies were convicted Friday on all counts in the lane-closure plot known as "Bridgegate."

The New Jersey governor's former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly, and his former top Port Authority official Bill Baroni were found guilty in the plot, a use of George Washington Bridge traffic as a means of political retribution. They are convicted of working with David Wildstein, a former Christie ally who has already pleaded guilty, to get retribution on the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, who did not endorse Christie in his re-election.

The verdict comes after more than a month of proceedings and an attempt by the defense to declare a mistrial. Sentencing is set for Feb. 21, 2017. 

Christie has denied having any knowledge of the 2013 incident, in which some of the George Washington Bridge was blocked, until after it happened. But some of the testimony in the case implied Christie was aware of the plan before it took place.
Wildstein served as a star witness for the prosecution. 

Christie, who previously had presidential ambitions, heads Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's transition team. He plans to campaign for Trump in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania this weekend.

So by using Clinton email coverage rules, how doomed is Donald Trump's campaign now by association?  And he's still planning on hitting the campaign trail?

For who, Hillary?

Bye Chris.  Enjoy your impending impeachment trial.

Trump's Pence-ive Decision

So here's a blood-curdling Halloween tale for you: it turns out Donald Trump really, really wanted New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie as his running mate and even offered him the job, but was then talked out of it by his family and campaign manager Paul Manafort in a weird story involving lying to Trump about plane trouble in order to get him to stay and talk to Mike Pence.  Trump and Christie developed a fast friendship, and Trump wanted to offer Christie the VP slot out of loyalty.  And basically everyone around Trump realized this was a horrible decision because Christie was going to go down in flames over Bridgegate.

“Trump cares about who’s the most loyal and who kisses his a– the most, not who’s the most qualified and what’s the best political decision,” said a source close to the campaign. “If it was up to him, it would have been Christie.”

The two men had developed a close relationship. Whenever Christie visited Trump’s campaign headquarters, he’d spend most of his time in onetime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski’s office, ignoring Manafort and other top aides, a source said.

Christie contacted Trump and made his final, impassioned ­appeal on July 12.

“Christie said he thinks he deserves it and he earned it,” a second Trump source said. Convinced, Trump made the ­offer.

Christie “said all the BS that Trump likes to hear, and Trump said, ‘Yeah, sure I’m giving it to you.’ ”

That didn’t sit well with Manafort, who had arranged for Trump to meet Pence in Indianapolis on July 13, and fly back together to New York the next day for a formal announcement.

After Trump tentatively decided on Christie, Manafort told Trump his plane had a mechanical problem, campaign sources said, forcing Trump to spend another night in the Hoosier State. Pence then made his case to be Trump’s No. 2 over dinner as Trump’s advisers argued that Christie’s Bridgegate troubles would sink the campaign.

“Trump had wanted Christie but Bridgegate would have been the biggest national story,” a third Trump source said. “He’d lose the advantage of not being corrupt.”

Trump agreed to name Pence the next day and broke the news to Christie, saying it would “tear my family apart if I gave you VP,” a source said.

A Trump/Christie ticket would be down by 15 points right now.  Really is a shame that he didn't pick the governor, considering how much trouble Christie is in over the Bridgegate trial ongoing right now.

Five witnesses – including three who remain steadfast allies – refuted his claim that he was "blindsided" and knew nothing about his staff's involvement in the lane closures before the rest of us did.

Among those who contradicted the governor under oath are Michael DuHaime, his chief strategist for the last decade; Mike Drewniak, his press secretary during that entire stretch, and Deborah Gramiccioni, his deputy chief of staff at the time. You can read excerpts from their testimony here.

The governor is not charged. Prosecutors say that he knew about the lane closures as they occurred, but knowledge of the plot is not a crime in itself. And no one in this trial has suggested that Christie ordered the lane closures.

But the rules of the courtroom are one thing, and the rules of politics are quite another. It's tough to govern after absorbing a blow like this.

"It's been incredibly damaging to hear one person after another directly contradict him," says Julian Zelizer, a professor at Princeton University. "And if the national election goes as poorly for him as some think, that will add to the damage. Because he is forever connected to Donald Trump."

Indeed, the combination of Trump and Christie's problems would have most likely resulted in the biggest GOP presidential loss in generations. If Paul Manafort hadn't pulled a dirty trick to save Trump from his own terrible judgment, this race would actually be more lopsided in Clinton's favor than it is now.

What could have been, eh Republican party?

BridgeGate Over Troubled Water, Con't

Well folks, we've reached the point of Chris Christie Bridgegate saga where the GOP governor of New Jersey, failed presidential hopeful and Trump errand boy for McDonald's runs is now in a heap of serious legal trouble.

A judge has found probable cause for a complaint of official misconduct against Gov. Chris Christie related to the George Washington Bridge lane closures. 

The case now goes to the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, which will decide whether to bring the issue to a grand jury for possible indictment. 

There was no immediate comment from Acting Bergen County Prosecutor Gurbir Grewal. Grewal was appointed to the position by Christie in January when John Molinelli retired. The governor nominated him to permanently retain the position last month, and it wasn't immediately clear if Grewal would recuse himself from the case due to the potential perception of conflict of interest.

Let's understand that a sitting governor is facing a possible indictment, and if there were somehow any last shreds of Christie's future political aspirations left, after being reduced to a national punchline and then deciding his best course of action was hitching his wagon to the Trump Train, they just died screaming in molten lava this morning.

How far the Village's favorite son has fallen.

The Bridge Too Far, Con't

Meanwhile the other big story in New Jersey this week is the start of the Bridgegate trial, where both the defense and prosecution agree that GOP Gov. Chris Christie is the central figure as the man behind the scheme to punish Democrats in the state by closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge.

Bill Baroni, 44, was Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns and operates the world’s busiest bridge. He is on trial alongside Bridget Anne Kelly, 44, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff.

The pair are accused of creating gridlock in Fort Lee over five mornings in September 2013 to punish the town’s mayor, a Democrat, for not endorsing the Republican governor’s reelection bid. They are charged with misusing federally funded property, wire fraud and depriving residents of their constitutional right to travel freely in the town. They face the possibility of years in jail and fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Not only was Christie told of the lane closures in the midst of gridlock on the Fort Lee side of the bridge, lawyers said during opening statements, he was so entrenched in the politics and activities of the Port Authority that he conferred considerable powers on an old schoolmate. That person, David Wildstein, who was named to an influential post at the agency by Christie, is expected to be the trial’s star witness after he negotiated a plea deal with federal prosecutors.

“When David Wildstein spoke, Governor Christie’s voice came out and everybody knew it,” said Michael Baldassare, Baroni’s attorney. He added that evidence in the trial will show that Wildstein “looks like a ventriloquist doll sitting on Christopher J. Christie’s lap.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna contradicted Christie’s repeated public statements that he knew nothing about the lane closures until months after they were found to have been politically motivated.

Christie did not respond to questions about the trial at a town hall meeting on education funding in Whippany on Monday.

Khanna said that Wildstein and Baroni boasted about the traffic problems to Christie three days into the week-long closures at a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center in 2013, celebrating the fact that they were ignoring pleas for help from Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich.

“The evidence will show that Baroni and Wildstein were so committed to their plan to punish Mayor Sokolich during those few minutes they had alone with the governor they bragged about the fact there were traffic problems in Fort Lee and Mayor Sokolich was not getting his calls returned,” Khanna said.

Bridgegate would have been the end of Christie's presidential aspirations anyway, even if he somehow had beaten Trump in the primaries.  It's just that closing lanes on a bridge to punish a city for a week is so cartoonishly corrupt, petty, and vindictive that I can't honestly believe we're in the trial phase of this already.  But apparently we have plenty of evidence to prosecute and a star witness, and as the trial begins, Chris Christie's political career looks to be coming to an end.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer friggin guy.

Sunday Long Read: Bored Walk Empire

This week's Sunday Long Read is Book of Numbers author Joshua Cohen's case that as he looks back at growing up in New Jersey, the forces most responsible for the downfall of Atlantic City are people you, as ZVTS readers, might have heard of in passing: one Chris Christie and one Donald J. Trump.

I FIRST NOTICED THIS SEA CHANGE LAST FALL, when a certain type of red-faced, overweight, whatcha-gonna-do-about-it New Jersey/New York male commandeered our national politics. Both Donald Trump and Chris Christie were talked about in my family constantly—Trump since before I was even in utero, and Christie since George W. Bush appointed him US Attorney for New Jersey in 2001, and especially since he became governor in 2010. But it was only after suffering through their schoolyard-bully penis-contests during the 2016 Republican primaries that I began to recognize how similar they were, how alike in personality and in unctuous, disingenuous style. If I hadn’t detected their toxic resemblance before, it was only because they’d been menacing different playgrounds: Trump having always been nominally private sector, brandishing the better, or just more recognizable, brand; Christie having always been nominally public sector, an elected official who must be held to higher standards. The ongoing SEC and Congressional and New Jersey State investigations into Christie’s alleged misappropriation of Port Authority monies, his allegedly having made federal emergency relief funds available to Jersey cities affected by Hurricane Sandy contingent on city-government support of unrelated state-government initiatives, and, finally, his allegedly having ordered the George Washington Bridge closed as an act of political retaliation against the mayor of Fort Lee—and so snarling a major artery from Manhattan—will likely continue beyond the conclusion of his term in 2018. Jersey’s governor has always been such an unmitigated prick that what stunned me most last spring wasn’t Trump’s emergence as the GOP frontrunner, but Christie’s dutiful dropping-out and endorsing him—his assuming a role, even after Trump passed him over for VP, halfway between that of a catamite-butler and henchman-capo, the butt of Trump’s insulting fat jokes and the fetcher of his milkshakes and fries.

The Republican primary debates marked the televised degeneration of their friendship—or whatever a friendship can mean in politics—which began only in 2002, when Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, then a Philadelphia-based judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, nominated to that position by Bill Clinton, introduced her brother to the governor. The Christies were invited to Trump’s third wedding, to Melania; the Trumps were invited to Christie’s first inauguration. A year into Christie’s first term, and six years after the State of New Jersey had started to pursue collection of the almost $30 million in back taxes owed by Trump’s casinos, the State suddenly reversed course and settled for $5 million. Trump contributed an exceedingly modest share of the money he saved to the restoration of New Jersey’s historic gubernatorial residence, Drumthwacket. New Jersey’s near-miraculous tax-forgiveness must be understood in the same way as its governor’s near-miraculous abjection: neither are demonstrations of Trump’s master outmaneuvering, but rather of Christie’s cravenness. Christie will do anything to win, or be on the winning team. If he can’t be President, or VP, he’ll plump for chief of staff, or attorney general, or even just settle for a monogrammed-T swag bag with a Trump hat, Trump steaks, Trump wine. Christie’s not only inept, he’s also running out of options: there isn’t much of his party left to knock around. Politics (budget meetings in the State House in Trenton) used to be distinct from entertainment (The Celebrity Apprentice in syndication), but no more. Christie seems jealous of Trump, not just of his financial success or his nomination, but of how well and recklessly Trump, as a former/current reality TV star, can lie. Christie has always just ignored, withheld, or fastidiously obfuscated. Trump, by contrast, can’t afford not to be blatant or audacious in his untruths, so as to keep earning free airtime from the cable networks and radio stations whose ratings and ad revenues increase—blatantly, audaciously—in correspondence.

To me, Trump was always a blusterer, a conniver, a mouth: a cotton-candy-haired clown who crashed the AC party late and left it early and ugly. To my parents and their cadre, the Republican nominee was a more malevolent breed of fraud: a dishonest client and dysfunctional boss. I spent my first weekend in AC convincing my parents to introduce me, or reintroduce me, to their casino friends, acquaintances, and colleagues, and spent my first week explaining my presence to many concerned and baffled adults, to people who didn’t recognize me from childhood, to people I didn’t recognize from childhood, and to strangers and all and sundry who’d make the time to talk Trump with me. The word I heard most often in reference to the GOP candidate—from Steven Perskie, the former New Jersey assemblyman and state senator whose original gaming referendum brought casinos to AC in 1976; from Nelson Johnson, the New Jersey superior court judge who wrote the book version of Boardwalk Empire; from Mayor Don Guardian, one of the few AC mayors in my lifetime not to have been charged with corruption; from Ibrahim Abdali and his cousin who’d only identify himself as Mohammed, Afghan refugees who sell pipes and bongs and martial arts weaponry on the Boardwalk—the word I heard most often was failure.

Every Trump account I was given in AC described a man so extraordinarily bad at business, or at being anything besides a business-celebrity, that he was forced to switch from building casinos to branding casinos with his name, that polysemous pentagrammaton he charged his partners to use and then sued them to remove once the decaying properties became a liability. In the 1980s and ’90s, the casinos with which Trump was associated comprised between a third and a quarter of AC’s gaming industry. The Playboy Hotel and Casino, which was founded in ’81, became the Atlantis in ’84, and went bankrupt in ’85, was acquired by Trump in ’89 and renamed The Trump Regency; he renamed it again as Trump’s World’s Fair in ’96, and it was closed in ’99 and demolished in 2000. Trump Castle, built in cooperation with Hilton in ’85, was rebranded as Trump Marina in ’97, sold at a loss to Landry’s Inc. in 2011, and is now operated by Landry’s as the Golden Nugget. Trump Plaza, built in cooperation with Harrah’s in ’84, went bankrupt and shuttered in 2014 and now just rots.

And then there’s the Trump Taj Mahal, which Trump built with the help of Resorts International in 1990 on financial footings so shaky and negligent that by the end of the decade he’d racked up more than $3.4 billion in debt, including business (mostly high-interest junk-bond) and personal debt which he handled by conflating them. By lumping them together under the auspices of a publicly traded company, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, he dumped all his burdens onto the backs of his shareholders even as he continued to treat his casino receipts as profits, to be raided and reinvested in development in New York. Even while Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts bled an average of $49 million a year into the late ’90s, even while its share price plummeted from $35 to $0.17 through the early 2000s, Trump himself continued to receive a salary in the millions, not to mention bonuses and the monies his personally held companies made from his publicly traded company leasing office space in Manhattan’s Trump Tower and renting Trump Shuttle helicopters and Trump Airlines airplanes to fly around showroom-acts and high-rollers. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts finally went bankrupt in 2004, and in its restructuring became Trump Entertainment Resorts, which itself went bankrupt in 2014 and was fire-sold to Icahn Enterprises, whose subsidiary, Tropicana Entertainment Inc., has run the Taj into a $100 million hole. Carl Icahn, the conglomerate’s chairman, was once a wary adversary who now endorses Trump, though he’s declined Trump’s offer to become the next secretary of the treasury: “I am flattered but do not get up early enough in the morning to accept this opportunity.”

On July 1, at the height of the season, the Taj’s unionized employees from UNITE HERE Local 54 went on strike, demanding a wage increase and the reinstatement of health and pension benefits suspended in the transfer of ownership. Negotiations were never scheduled; Icahn and the union couldn’t agree on a venue, let alone an agenda. In early August, Icahn announced that he’d be closing the Taj after Labor Day. And so the fall forecast kept getting grimmer, with the loss of the city’s most prominent casino and more than 2,800 jobs.

The Taj’s demise would be chronicled throughout the summer by the New York Times and the Washington Post, in articles framed as analyses of Trump’s finances. These articles, like the leveraged-debt practices they documented, were virtuoso feats, given that they were researched without access to the candidate’s tax returns, which he refuses to release. But reading them induced headaches: all those loans and defaults and shell-companies shattered, keeping track of them was like counting the beach, grain by grain.

As several of you have mentioned before, Trump is the evil carney barker of American entrepreneurship, the blending of Michael Douglas's Gordon Gekko of Wall Street and Jonathan Pryce's Mr. Dark of Something Wicked This Way Comes.  Nothing brings this to the forefront like Trump's abject failures in Atlantic City and the lengths to which he went to cover them up. 

The reality is that the one guy in America who could have absolutely ended Donald Trump's political career before it started was Chris Christie, who could have easily opened the boardwalk books on Trump and sunk him, but my suspicion is Christie, being a lawyer and federal prosecutor himself, realized too late that cozying up to Trump was a thread that if he pulled at would have unraveled his own campaign as well.  Perhaps that why Trump was so confident he could run against Christie and win, and did just that.

Cohen neatly dissects the pathology of Trump, the con man who failed at business spectacularly, but who succeeded beyond his wildest dreams at convincing everyone else he was a success, and the trail of victims in Trump's wake certainly includes the current governor of New Jersey.  If anything Cohen's piece giving voice to the warnings about Atlantic City stands as a prediction of what awaits America's economy in a Trump administration should the unthinkable happen.

Maybe it's not so unthinkable after all.

Donald Trump In "The Purge"

Now that Donald Trump is the official GOP nominee for President, his transition team is hitting the ground running so that it can tackle the toughest problems facing America should Trump be elected, and apparently at the top of the list is a mass purge of Obama appointees (and other political enemies) to the federal government, led by transition team head Chris Christie.

If he wins the presidency, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would seek to purge the federal government of officials appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama and could ask Congress to pass legislation making it easier to fire public workers, Trump ally, Chris Christie, said on Tuesday.

Christie, who is governor of New Jersey and leads Trump's White House transition team, said the campaign was drawing up a list of federal government employees to fire if Trump defeats Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

“As you know from his other career, Donald likes to fire people,” Christie told a closed-door meeting with dozens of donors at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, according to an audio recording obtained by Reuters and two participants in the meeting.

Christie was referring to Trump's starring role in the long-running television show "The Apprentice," where his catch-phrase was "You're fired!"

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump's transition advisers fear that Obama may convert these appointees to civil servants, who have more job security than officials who have been politically appointed. This would allow officials to keep their jobs in a new, possibly Republican, administration, Christie said.

“It’s called burrowing," Christie said. "You take them from the political appointee side into the civil service side, in order to try to set up ... roadblocks for your successor, kind of like when all the Clinton people took all the Ws off the keyboard when George Bush was coming into the White House.” 

And of course a newly incoming administration is going to change personnel, but not even Dubya went this far this fast, announcing that a mass purge was a top priority the day Dubya was officially nominated.  Most people at least have the grace to draw up an enemies list after they get elected, but not our Donald!

Oh, and Christie mentioned that Congress needs to pass legislation for Trump to sign that will get rid of civil service protections making government employees easier to purge and that the agency Trump's going after first will be the EPA.

So yeah, probably no difference between Trump and Clinton.

Chris Bag O' Veeps?

Don't look now, but Donald Trump's Guy Friday and McDonald's gofer Chris Christie (who may actually be Governor of New Jersey in his spare time, we're kinda cloudy on that) may be Trump's sidekick on the ticket come November.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is being vetted as a possible vice presidential pick for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to two ranking Republican officials. 

Despite Christie going through the vetting process, the two ranking Republican officials told ABC News they doubt Christie would ultimately be Trump’s pick. 

Christie endorsed Trump for president in February, just weeks after suspending his presidential campaign, and has been a surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. 

In addition to having been tapped to lead Trump’s potential transition in May, Christie has emerged as an influential voice on the Trump team.

At a press conferenceat the New Jersey statehouse, Christie denied that he would be vice president. 

"All I can tell you is that my intention is that I'm going to serve the rest of my term as governor until Jan. 16, 2018, and then return to the private sector," Christie said.

All I have to say is that New Jersey will be happy to get rid of the guy if he goes, but that would mean he'd be VP, and Trump...well...yeah.

I understand Mars is nice this time of year.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if it's Christie, he's just as mean as Trump is, only without the charisma. We'll see.

Last Call For Dissed Christie

What a precipitous fall for New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie. He's run into a massive backlash over his failed presidential campaign and recent endorsement of Donald Trump.  Now papers in his home state are calling for the governor's resignation, the largest of which is the Newark Star-Ledger. Their editorial board is now openly calling for Christie to step down.

Gov. Chris Christie has made it abundantly clear that governing New Jersey is a distant second priority for him, far behind the demands of his personal ambition. 

He has answered every crisis with neglect during his disastrous second term. 

Atlantic City is about to go bankrupt, and yet he sat on a reform package for six months without explanation. The transit system is in disrepair, with our link to New York City vulnerable to a crippling breakdown, and he watches passively as the transit fund drifts toward bankruptcy. New Jersey's fiscal crisis is the nation's second worst, and he has charted no viable path toward a political deal. 

All this is infuriating when you consider that Christie possesses the political talent to steer the state towards safer ground. He made that clear in his first term, when he scored substantial wins on a centrist agenda. 

But if his first term showed that he has the talent, his second term has shown that he lacks the character. 

His craven endorsement of Donald Trump is only the final blow, the moment when he lost any last shred of credibility. His fulsome praise of Trump, after his stinging condemnations only a few weeks ago, is impossible to believe.

New Jersey's paper of record ends with a brutal assessment of Christie's multiple failures:

Our hope is that the calls for his resignation grow into a roar, that it includes Republican voices, and that Christie finds some face-saving way to step aside. 

Failing that, we can only hope that he takes a moral inventory of his own conduct and changes course. If not, it will be time to consider a recall election. 

The best answer for New Jersey would be for the governor to quit on his own. It's time for fresh leadership in this state. Christie has done enough damage.

He won't step down of course, and the editorial makes no mistake in falsely believing Christie possesses the moral character to do so at all.  It's very apparent however that Christie's higher political ambitions are done.

Couldn't have happened to a more deserving pile of garbage.

Last Call For The Clown Car Contracts

Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina are out.  No surprise there, they finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in New Hampshire last night.

Behind Jeb Bush.

Jeb Bush.

But the smart money still seems to be on Rubio, right Josh Marshall?

In a year when Donald Trump is now the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination, It is likely wise not to rule anything out. But it is also worth noting that in addition to almost certainly ending Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, Chris Christie probably also ended Rubio's political career.

Ouch.

So where next? 

Not the House, not the Senate and clearly not the presidency. He's already been at the pinnacle. It's hard to go back to anything else. The obvious path is to take a few years off and come back to run for Governor as a more seasoned, more mature politician. If that goes well, he's back in business as a national politician, maybe even one better positioned to make a fifty-something run for president. 

Maybe. 

But you usually don't get multiple chances at this - especially if you get marked as a loser. The most likely scenario is that Marco Rubio's career in elective politics is over.

What a difference three years makes, huh.



How's that working out for you, Marco?

A Rude-bio Awakening

Nate Silver and the Five Thirty Eight team thought Florida Sen. Marco Rubio flubbed last week's pre-New Hampshire primary debate, but Silver offered the caveat that New Hampshire voters may have seen it differently.

We here at FiveThirtyEight endorse the conventional wisdom, for a change. Like most other people covering the event, we thought that Marco Rubio had a really bad night in Saturday’s Republican debate, that the three Republican governors (Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich) had a pretty good night, and that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz were somewhere in between. 

Rubio, who received a C- in our anonymous staff grading,1 came into the night with a lot on the line. He began the evening at 16 percent in our New Hampshire polling average, with Trump at 30 percent. Believe it or not, that 14-point gap is not too much to overcome in New Hampshire; in the past, there have been last-minute swings and election-day polling misfires of about that magnitude in the state. By the same token, however, Rubio’s second-place position in the polls is not at all safe. Kasich and Cruz, both at 12 percent, and Bush, at 9 percent, could easily catch him; perhaps even Christie at 5 percent could also with a really strong finish.

If the final New Hampshire polls ahead of tomorrow's primaries are any indication however, Rubio is in real trouble.

An internal poll conducted on Sunday suggests that Marco Rubio’s fumbled debate performance has damaged his prospects heading into the New Hampshire primary.
The poll, conducted by the pro-John Kasich New Day for America Super PAC, shows Rubio plummeting to fourth place in the primary here, with 10 percent of the vote. Most of the polling conducted in the immediate days before the debate showed Rubio in second place.

The survey, which was based on phone calls to 500 likely voters (margin of error plus or minus 3 percent), was conducted Sunday, the day following the latest Republican debate. Rubio came under scathing attack from Chris Christie, who cast the first term Florida senator as too unready, ambitious, and superficial to occupy the Oval Office. 

Donald Trump holds a wide lead in the survey, receiving 35 percent. He more than doubles runner-up Kasich, who has 15 percent. In third is Jeb Bush, with 13 percent. Behind Rubio in fifth and sixth place, respectively, are Christie and Ted Cruz. Both receive 8 percent. 

The results are welcome news for Kasich and Bush, both of whom have made New Hampshire the centerpiece of the primary campaigns. Strong performances on Tuesday will give them reason to fight on to the South Carolina primary, which will be held Feb. 20.

Now, the grains of salt to be taken with a Kasich super-PAC poll showing him in second and Rubio fourth behind Jeb :(  are approximately the size of beach balls, but should this turn out to be the case, especially if Trump runs away with the win, it seems like Rubio's clever strategy of winning the GOP nomination by coming in third may be in a smidge of doubt.

The greater point is there's only so much the Village can do to stop Trump if he wins tomorrow and Ted Cruz is nowhere to be found in New Hampshire after winning Iowa.  Cruz finishing sixth behind Chris Christie?

Suddenly "Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump" is going to find its way into print sooner rather than later. Minor headline, suddenly Iowa doesn't matter anymore and South Carolina does.

It also means that if Rubio and Cruz finish that far out, the whole "No, YOU drop out so I can consolidate the anti-Trump/Cruz vote!" fight will go on for some time.

Oh, and just a reminder about the great "moderate" hope thing, as President, Marco Rubio would outlaw abortion and force women to carry their rapist's babies.

“It’s a terrible situation,” Rubio replied. “I mean, a crisis pregnancy, especially as a result of something as horrifying as that, I’m not telling you it’s easy. I’m not here saying it’s an easy choice. It’s a horrifying thing that you’ve just described.” 

“I get it,” he added. “I really do. And that’s why this issue is so difficult. But I believe a human being, an unborn child has a right to live, irrespective of the circumstances of which they were conceived. And I know that the majority of Americans don’t agree with me on that.”

Sorry ladies, Marco's making that choice for you.  Because rapists are dads too, you know.

Last Call For Pissed Christie, Con't

Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Christie presents your Republican minority voter outreach from the GOP governor of a blue state, 2015 GOP primary season edition.

Later in the town hall, when a mother of two police officers asked about how Christie would support law enforcement, the governor let loose fiery attack on the Black Lives Matter movement in general and in particular, on Clinton's willingness to meet with representatives of it.

"I think all lives matter," said Christie, who was standing in a cafe where a lever-action rifle hung inside its entrance with the words "We Don't Dial 911" above it.

"But let me tell you this: When a movement like that calls for the murder of police officers...no President of the United States should dignify a group like that by saying anything positive about them, and no candidate for president, like Hillary Clinton, should give them any credibility by meeting with them, as she's done."

Last month, Clinton had met privately with members of the Black Lives Matter movement while in Washington D.C. for the National Council of Negro Women.

Christie vowed never to do so.

"I want the Black Lives Matter people to understand: Don't call me for a meeting. You're not getting one."

"Black Lives Matter called for the murder of police" is the new  "Black Panthers are attacking white voters at polling places" baloney and it will be repeated for years.

And believe me when I say as far as GOP voters are concerned, every black voter is a "Black Lives Matter thug".

Pissed Christie's Last Ride

The NY Times has had enough of New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie and is demanding that the Republican drop out of his "vanity" run for President and get back to dealing with all the problems awaiting him in Trenton.

Mr. Christie has been called a lot of things, but until Wednesday’s debate performance, “barely there” was not among them. In eight minutes of speaking time, Mr. Christie said little of substance. As for his parting pitch that he’s “deadly serious about changing this culture” of government, well, his constituents in New Jersey know better. 

This isn’t strictly about Mr. Christie’s fitness for the presidency. His role in New Jersey’s budget crisis, betrayal on affordable housingand the interlocking scandals on his watch, from Bridgegate to “the chairman’s flight,” say a great deal about that. 

The point is that New Jersey is in trouble, and the governor is off pursuing a presidential run that’s turned out to be nothing more than a vanity project. Mr. Christie’s numbers are in the basement, and he’s nearly out of campaign cash. This is his moment, all right: to go home and use the rest of his term to clean out the barn, as Speaker John Boehner would say. 

Mr. Christie emerged as a national politician because his constituents saw him as a leader who put New Jersey first. His state battered by Hurricane Sandy and his party riven by the Tea Party, he sought needed federal assistance, and if that meant embracing a Democratic president, so what. “So what?” was a positive Christie characteristic back then. One could disagree with his methods, but he managed to make his efforts on behalf of his state seem sincere. 

It must have been rough for those who re-elected him to see him hold forth Wednesday in a debate that centered on the national economy, when he’s been a net failure on the New Jersey economy. On his watch, one of the per-capita richest states in the nation has become one its biggest laggards in economic growth, its budget woes prompting an appalling series of credit downgrades. Mr. Christie’s promises, from fixing the state’s pensions shortfall to its infrastructure, have come to less than nothing. More galling still is that he was not the only such politician on the dais. Since when does shortchanging your home state — looking at you, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal — qualify a public servant to be president?

Two observations:  One, as I said years ago, Chris Christie would have to tilt too far to the right to be able to sell his record as a blue state Republican to 2016 GOP primary voters who hate him.  And two, given the record of the the Republican politicans who have wrecked their states: Perry, Walker, Christie, Jindal, Bush and Rubio, no wonder they are turning to Trump, Carson and Fiorina.  They haven't failed them yet.

Christie has run New Jersey into the ground and continues to face serious questions about using his office to damage his political opponents.  Of course he was never going to win, and he never had a chance.

Not that New Jersey is going to be glad to see him, but he owes the state his best effort to fix the problems he left behind when he ran for the White House.

Packaged For Consumption

Donald Trump is winning among Republicans because he's outright saying what the GOP has been dancing around: the "50-State Southern Strategy" has made it acceptable to spew outright racism to win Republican votes, and those falling behind in the crowded field of professional race-baiters have to give ever more ridiculous rhetoric to try to stay in the race.

Today's example is Chris Christie, all but given up for dead at this point, suggesting we "track" undocumented documents like FedEx packages.  And lest you think that I'm engaging in hyperbole, this is Christie's actual idea.

"I'm going to have Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, come work for the government for three months. Just come for three months to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and show these people," the New Jersey governor said at a town hall event here.

Christie added that while FedEx can track boxes, the U.S. can't track undocumented immigrants.

"You go online and at any moment, FedEx can tell you where that package is," he said. "Yet we let people come into this country with visas, and the minute they come in, we lose track of them."

Christie added, "We need to have a system that tracks you from the moment you come in and then when your time is up," he said. "However long your visa is, then we go get you and tap you on the shoulder and say, 'Excuse me, it's time to go.'"

Perhaps we can track them with RFID chips.  Or satellites.  Or go old school and use tattoos and yellow stars to signify their status.

Smith is the father of Samantha Smith, a Christie spokeswoman.

Christie added that conversations about "anchor babies" make the Republican Party look unfairly hostile to immigrants.

"The entire conversation about 'anchor babies' is a distraction that makes us sound like we're anti-immigrant, and we're not," he said. "Our party is not that way. We want people to do it legally. Do it the right way."

We don't mind the "good ones".  But the rest are those people, and we have to dispose of them, you see.  Just tap them on the shoulder and round them up.  You know, I think a European guy had a pretty similar idea about 75 years ago about another group of people.

Didn't work out so well, if I recall my history.

Republicans are pretty bad at that whole history thing, however.

Exit question: What do privacy advocates have to say about this, especially the ones on the right?

Exit question #2:  How well is that particular thought of marking a group of people for later removal playing in Christie's home state of New Jersey?

Final exit question: How long before the rest of the GOP advocates this?