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As much as anything, this week was the real start of the 2024 campaign, and the preview it offered suggested how much the next year will be dominated by variations on the tiresome theme of Trump, Trump, and Trump again. Even the former Presidents absence from the first Republican debate, on Wednesday, did little to distract from the story line of the poll-dominating elephant not in the room, as the Fox News anchor Bret Baier put it. But, if the subject is by now a familiar one, the plot has taken a notable twist, summed up in the extraordinary spectacle that unfolded in Atlanta late on Thursday evening.

In a highly public display manufactured for maximum prime-time impact by the worlds most famous criminal defendant, Trump flew into the city on his private jet ahead of a Friday deadline for his surrender, then motorcaded to the Fulton County Jail, where he was arrested, fingerprinted, and had his mug shot taken, before being released on a pre-negotiated two-hundred-thousand-dollar bail. There was no real news in this, of course, since he was indicted earlier this month. But that did not stop the breathless hours of coveragethe scenes of his plane slowly rolling down the tarmac, the extensive motorcade ride through Atlanta, his self-reported and highly suspect description of himself as six feet three and two hundred and fifteen pounds. The big reveal of the evening was his photo, in which he wore a navy suit and red tie. He glared straight into the camera for his big moment; the trademark Trump glowereyebrows raised, vaguely menacing, closer to a scowl than a smileis one he has cultivated for years. In the White House, his aides called it, simply, the Stare. He stands charged with illegally seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in Georgia and nationally. If the Fulton County district attorney, Fani Willis, has her way, he will go on trial as soon as October 23rd, alongside a rogues gallery of eighteen co-defendants in a scheme that Willis has likened to a criminal racketeering conspiracy.

The unprecedented photo of a former American President treated like a common criminal, which Willis seemed intent on orchestratingUnless somebody tells me differently, Fulton Countys sheriff had said earlier this week, we are following our normal practiceswill go down in history, and not, it is safe to say, in a good way. Look at the mug shots of the Watergate conspirators: there is a grainy satisfaction in contemplating those black-and-white figures today, knowing how their stories ended up. Yet, for now, Trump sees only political gainand, quite possibly, the spectre of a historic self-pardonin that snarly snapshot from the Fulton County Jail. And why, after all, shouldnt he? The four indictments this year have been good for his poll numbers with the Republican base, good for his fund-raising, and good for his favored political move of presenting himself as a perpetual victim who must seek vengeance against his persecutors.

Even the big event whose timing he did not orchestrate this week tended to reinforce his preferred narrative of inevitable victory over a largely quiescent field of Republican also-rans. Trumps absence at the debate, on Wednesday, afforded the eight G.O.P. candidates who made it to the stage a chance to argue over policy matterssuch as support for the war in Ukraine and deficit reductionwithout his oxygen-sucking presence. Only ten minutes of questions in two long hours were actually about Trump and the ongoing challenge to American democracy that he presents. But it did not matter. The takeaway from the first debate of 2024 was not all that different from the takeaway from the first debate of the 2016 election cycle: the Republican Party is the Party of Trump, whether hes onstage or not.

The essential moment came at the top of the second hour, when the Fox News anchors finally, belatedly, uttered the T-word, asking which Republican candidates would endorse the ex-President as their nominee even in the increasingly likely scenario that he becomes a convicted felon. The responses that followed unrolled as a sort of democracy car crash: first the young entrepreneur and aspiring Trump clone Vivek Ramaswamys hand shot up, high, followed quickly by Nikki Haleys, Tim Scotts, and Doug Burgums. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Governor once touted as a possible Trump-killer until his leaden personality and clumsy campaigning sent him sinking in the polls, did himself no favors by looking to see what the other candidates were doing, then raising his hand as well.

Next to go was Mike Pence, the former Vice-President whose candidacy has veered between sanctimonious reminders of how he stood up to Trump, on January 6, 2021, and almost inexplicable acts of sycophancy toward him. A few minutes later, Pence would demand, in that deep baritone of his, that the other candidates weigh in on his January 6th choice to rebuff Trump and certify his 2020 election defeat. I think the American people deserve to know whether everyone on this stage agrees that I kept my oath to the Constitution that day, he said. Did he think the audience would forget that he had just pledged to vote for Trump again, criminal convictions be damned? Pence has long since perfected the ability to abase himself in public without seeming the least bit ashamed.

In the end, six out of eight candidates confirmed what we already knew: they would back Trump as the nominee, essentially, no matter what. The two exceptions were Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie. Someone has to stop normalizing this conduct, Christie said, of Trump, prompting audible boos from the audience. Baier and his co-anchor, Martha MacCallum, didnt even bother to ask which felonyout of the ninety-one counts, in four separate criminal indictments that he is currently facingTrump might be convicted of. That was not the point of their hypothetical, which instead served to remind America that even Republicans ostensibly running against the ex-President are very likely to end up voting for him.

Watching these hopelessly outmatched candidates, I kept thinking back to one of the great lines from last summers January 6th hearings in the House of Representatives. Trumps former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, described how, after the 2020 election, he and others had been part of Team Normal, those who tried and failed to convince Trump that he had really lost the election, only to find themselves pushed aside in favor of Team Crazy, whose members, led by Rudy Giuliani, aided and abetted Trumps lies about the rigged election. The Republican debate stage in Milwaukee this week was filled with candidates who came from what passes for Team Normal in todays G.O.P., figures such as Trumps former Vice-President, Pence; Trumps former U.N. Ambassador Haley; and Trumps former friend and adviser Christie.

All three of them built their careers as governors in the pre-Trump Republican Party: Pence and Haley in the reliably red states of Indiana and South Carolina, respectively; Christie in Democratic New Jersey, a point he emphasizedto little availin his debate-stage pitch for Republicans to go for a candidate who knows how to win a competitive race in unfriendly territory. But, just like Stepien and the rest of Team Normal, they all eventually sold out to Trump. In this, they represent the very considerable part of the Republican Party that knew supporting Trump was a disaster back in 2016 and, yet, when it came time for the general election and divvying up the spoils of power that followed his unlikely victory, they did it anyway.

If this were a different time, a viewer of Wednesdays debate might have concluded that it was not a bad night for Team Normal. Haley and Christie delivered several of the more memorable zingers while making impassioned cases for decidedly normal causes, such as supporting Ukraine, a free country aligned with the U.S., over Vladimir Putins murderous dictatorship, as Haley put it, or choosing to protect the Constitution over terminating it, as Christie put it. Both took especial glee in going after Ramaswamy, a Trump for the millennial set so automatic in his Trumpier-than-thou responses to any question that Christie lampooned him as a sort of ChatGPT version of a Republican candidate. It was a good dig but also perhaps unintentionally revealing: ChatGPT might very well come up with a Trumpist candidate who sounds a lot like this one.

Besides, the polls these days about the Republican race for 2024 are clear: Team Normal is a sideshow, and a highly compromised one at that. There should be little doubt that most of those who now claim to have moved on from Trump, such as Haley and Pence, will nonetheless raise their hands and vote for him again if they have to. For Republicans, for now, there is, once again, only Team Trump.

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The Harsh Glare of Justice for Donald Trump - The New Yorker

We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negros basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: for whites only.

We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.

A block or so away, at the Slutty Vegan, a Black-owned fast-food joint that serves bangin, plant-based fare, rap music rattles the room. Customers line up, ordering veggie meals with snappy names like Super Slut, Side Heaux and Fussy Hussy.

Its been a busy, busy week, says Freddie Ellis, a wiry 44-year-old who looks younger than his years. As he stands behind the merchandising counter, where you can buy bottled hot sauce, T-shirts and Slut Dust, a seasoning blend, he recounts the weeks events: Monday was the Beyonce concert and her fans flocked en masse to Slutty Vegan. (Thanks to the Beehive, Slutty Vegan made tens of thousands on that day alone, he says.) Tuesday was Trumps indictment. And Wednesday, the Atlanta Braves spanked the New York Yankees, 2 to 0.

What did he think of Trumps indictment?

They say no ones above the law, Ellis says. But thisll make him an icon to his supporters. I think what he did was wrong, but thisll make him look like a superhero.

Hes going to use this to his advantage.

Ellis tells me he didnt like what happened on Jan. 6, not one bit, especially the way insurrectionists were waving the Confederate flag. It dont get no more racist than that, Ellis says. Im from Alabama. But he doesnt not like Trump. Though hes a lifelong Democrat, hes not ruling out voting for the man in 2024. His wallet was a little fatter during the Trump presidency, particularly during lockdown, thanks to PPE loans and stimulus checks. That counts for a lot in his book.

I dont have a reason not to like him, Ellis says. I could relate to him in some ways in that he doesnt mind speaking his mind. Sometimes his mouth gets him into trouble.

I can relate to that.

Roughly 15 minutes away from the county courthouse, on Rice Street in Northwest Atlanta, is the Fulton County Jail, affectionately or perhaps contemptuously called the Rice Street Jail. Police have blocked off the entrance to the jail, which, from a distance, looks like a college campus with its sprawling grounds and lush green lawns.

This is where Trump and his 18 co-defendants, including Rudy Giuliani and and Kan ahem Yes former publicist, Trevian Kutti, will turn themselves in to be booked and processed. But will they arrive through the front entrance? Or sneak through the back? Theres no way to know, and so, to be on the safe side, TV crews erect tents outside both entrances, where they wait in the heat, practicing the time-honored art of the stakeout.

Next to the back entrance is the Jefferson Place Transitional House, a treatment center for men whore down on their luck. A cluster of men gather outside, some in wheelchairs, sunning themselves in the Georgia heat.

They talk about Trumps indictment with a sense of marvel: That the former president could be booked and fingerprinted in the same place where so many Black men have been locked up including Gunna, the rapper who in December pled guilty to racketeering charges is nothing short of amazing to them.

He claimed to be untouchable, says Michael Addah, a sweet-faced 30-year-old with baby dreadlocks. But God you know what Im saying? is the God of the Impossible. And Trump was able to be touched. Hes no different from anyone else. He needs to humble himself.

I figure hes getting his karma about all the things he was belligerent about. Its a big smack in the face.

Perez, sitting next to Addah in a Tupac T-shirt, says he cant vote, thanks to his criminal record. But if he could vote, he says, he wouldve voted for Trump.

Hes a big man, Perez, 42, says. Still, he wasnt happy with the January 6 shenanigans. It was too much drama, he says. People were jumping over the walls to get into the U.S. Capitol.

Meanwhile, by the front entrance, two young white women walk by slowly, holding up their phones, shooting video. They live right up the street, and they cant believe the drama thats unfolding in their front yards.

Do you think hes going to come? says Annelise Rempe, 21, who attends college in Denver. Im curious.

She means Trump, of course.

We think he deserves it, says her friend, Gillian Schuh, 21, who attends college at Parsons in New York City. He needs to be treated like everyone else.

I was really surprised he was being treated like a regular civilian, Rempe says.

Famous rappers have been here to get booked, like Gunna, Schuh adds.

Its crazy, Rempe says.

He hasnt been kind to minorities, Schuh says.

Rempe nods in agreement. I dont think hes going to be very popular she says, cutting herself off.

She stops, putting up her hands and peering through them at the jails entrance, looking like a film director framing a shot.

Whoa, Rempe says, shaking her head in amazement.

Im just taking it all in.

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'We're Loving It' Atlanta Reacts to Donald Trump's Indictment - POLITICO

After months of relentless taunting and hyping a debate clash with former President Donald J. Trump, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey turned to chiding.

If you qualify for the stage, which Trump has, not showing up is completely disrespectful to the Republican Party, who made you their nominee twice, and to the Republican voters, whose support youre asking for again, Mr. Christie told reporters on Friday outside the famed Versailles Cuban restaurant in Miami.

Mr. Christie built his entire presidential candidacy toward a marquee confrontation with Mr. Trump, relentlessly goading him and needling him as a coward in a clear effort to tempt the quick-to-anger former president into showing up to the debate on Wednesday in Milwaukee.

It appears Mr. Trump will not take the bait, other than swiping back at Mr. Christie on social media and in speeches. Last week, he signaled that he planned to skip the first Republican debate and instead sit for an interview with Tucker Carlson that will be broadcast online at the same time.

Mr. Trumps absence could lead to an anticlimactic scene at the debate, with Mr. Christie forced to launch unrequited broadsides through the airwaves without the fireworks of a Trump response.

They have been taunting each other back and forth on Twitter and campaign town halls, so it robs Christie of a big moment that he is looking for if Trump doesnt show up onstage, said Ryan Williams, a Republican strategist and veteran of two presidential campaigns. You can use the debate to get the anti-Trump message out that hes pushing, but youre going to lack that viral moment if the two of them arent looking at each other face to face.

Yet Mr. Christie and his team also see an opportunity if the pugnacious and unpredictable former president is not onstage. Mr. Christie, a confident debater and the only Trump critic in the Republican field with any kind of foothold, could shine in the vacuum, using candidates who have been far more deferential to Mr. Trump as a stand-in for him.

Mr. Christie tried out that kind of approach at a town hall event in Miami on Friday, chastising Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida over his super PACs disclosure of debate strategy memos, which called for him to defend Mr. Trump against Mr. Christies attacks onstage.

If Mr. DeSantis ends up doing so, Mr. Christie said he had one piece of advice: Get the hell out of the race.

In an interview this month during his surprise visit to Ukraine, Mr. Christie said he was not particularly bothered by the prospect of a debate without Mr. Trump.

It doesnt change my perspective or my tactical approach, he said. Because if hes not there, it just means two things. One, hes afraid to be on the same debate stage and defend his record. And two, you know, this is a guy who, by not showing up, just gives me more time. So its OK. Either way, I win.

Mr. Christie and his advisers see the debate as a forum built to the former governors strengths. Comfortable in unscripted moments in front of cameras, Mr. Christie has a confrontational style, hewed from years in the trenches of New Jersey politics, that has served him well in past debates, and he has over a decade of experience participating in them through two campaigns for governor and his 2016 run for president.

To prepare for Wednesday, he has been huddling with close advisers to go over topics at the heart of the campaign and anticipate different scenarios that may arise as he navigates the chaos of an eight-lectern stage. He has been heavily focused on the debate, bringing it up in casual conversations with both advisers and political acquaintances as he takes the temperature of the race.

At the same time, his preparations have a bare-bones nature. There are no mock debates, no fake stages with podiums, no advisers suiting up for the roles of Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.

In part, he is informed by his experience during the 2016 presidential debates, when he notably avoided attacking Mr. Trump. (He has said on the campaign trail that he was the only candidate to go speak to Mr. Trump during commercial breaks.) Mr. Christie was quick to pounce on his other rivals, including a now-famous exchange with Senator Marco Rubio of Florida.

There it is, Mr. Christie said, interrupting Mr. Rubio, who had pivoted to a line about former President Barack Obama during an exchange with Mr. Christie. The memorized 25-second speech. There it is, everybody.

That dismissive riposte sent the Rubio campaign spiraling, with headlines concluding that Mr. Christie had exposed Mr. Rubio as a robotic candidate reliant on consultants and that the Florida senator had choked. After polling near second or third place in New Hampshire before the debate, Mr. Rubio finished fifth in the states primary race less than a week later.

Built into the question of how Mr. Christie treats this weeks debate is just how much Republican voters want to see someone caustically rip into Mr. Trump, whether he is onstage or not.

Despite his mounting legal problems, Mr. Trump remains exceptionally popular within the party. And Mr. Christies constant provocations, beyond endearing the former governor to some moderate Republicans, have also turned him into something of a #Resistance hero among liberals who will not be voting in a G.O.P. primary.

Waiting for a flight at Kennedy International Airport in New York early this month, Mr. Christie was approached for a photo by a fellow traveler, Jessica Rutherford, who told him she appreciated his broadsides against Mr. Trump and hoped he would continue.

Youre like Obi-Wan Kenobi, youre our only hope! she told him.

But Ms. Rutherford, an intellectual property lawyer from Wilton, Conn., and a Democrat, conceded that she was unlikely to vote for Mr. Christie in November 2024 if he were to win the Republican primary.

Undaunted, Mr. Christie made his pitch. Ill be awake in meetings with foreign leaders, he offered, in a jab at President Bidens age.

Reagan wasnt awake in meetings with foreign leaders, Ms. Rutherford shot back.

I bet you didnt vote for him, either, Mr. Christie replied.

Patricia Mazzei contributed reporting from Miami.

Read more:
What Will Chris Christie Do Without Trump at the GOP Debate? - The New York Times

Murray Kempton, the greatest newspaper columnist New York has ever known, was both a moralist and an ironist, particularly as he chronicled the lives, the crimes, and the decline of the Cosa Nostra in the pages of Newsday and the Post. Dressed in a black suit and listening to Verdi on his headphones, Kempton would bicycle to arraignments at Foley Square and interviews at the Ravenite Social Club, on Mulberry Street. He had no illusions about the mafiosi. But, in describing their ordinariness, their codes of behavior and self-delusions, their modest houses in Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, he seemed to say that the Five Families were merely a more lurid reflection of the rest of us.

You know, most of these guys, when you meet them, are just as bad as respectable people, he once told me. As John Gotti, the Dapper Don of the Gambinos, headed off to federal prisondoomed, in part, by his prideful indiscretions and by the bugs planted amid the espresso cups at the RaveniteKempton saw him as the end of something. Do you remember that moment in Henry Adamss Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres when Adams speaks of the Virgin and Child looking down on a dead faith? Well, John Gotti believed in all of it. He believed in a dead faith.

I once asked Kempton if he ever really liked any of the mobsters of his acquaintance. He told me that he had tremendous admiration for Carmine Persico, the longtime boss of the Colombo crime family. He was a killer, of course, but the wiretaps brought out an appealing side to his character. Kempton recalled an episode in which Persico, Carmine Galante, and others were playing cards, and Galante, a widely loathed capo of the Bonanno crime family, kept insulting a player of Irish extraction. Galante just kept it up with all manner of obscene anti-Irish comments, Kempton said. Finally, Persico said, Get out of the game! and Galante did, slinking off for home. The next day, Galante came back to the card game, begging, Please! Im sorry! Ill never do it again! It was wonderful. Persico said about Galante, Hes not such a bad guy. He was just brung up wrong.

Yet even Kempton, who died in 1997, might have struggled to find a shred of virtue in another fallen DonDonald J. Trumpwho is finally confronting a judicial system that he cannot bully into submission. This week, the forty-fifth President, who built his early fortune on casinos and construction, and Rudolph Giuliani, the former hero mayor of New York, whose early legal reputation came from locking up mobsters and bankers on racketeering statutes, will turn themselves in with a gaggle of co-conspirators on forty-one felony charges in Fulton County, Georgia. Fani Willis, the countys district attorney, is employing a state version of RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, to make her case. Easy ironies are blooming like dandelions.

I wish I could discuss those ironies with Kempton, who always had time for a struggling colleague on deadline. As a connoisseur of Mob wiretaps, he would have relished Trumps long telephone call to Brad Raffensperger, Georgias secretary of state, on January 2nd, 2021, in which the sitting President adopts a mob-boss tone as he asks Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes, which were needed to steal the state from Joe Biden.

In Kemptons absence, I turned to others who have spent time prosecuting or chronicling the Mob. To them, Trumps gangsterish ways are unmistakable. Jim Comey picked this up from the beginning, Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, and a friend of Comeys, told me. Richman recalled when Trump invited Comey, then the director of the F.B.I., to dinner in the Green Room of the White House. Trump leaned across the table and said, I need loyalty. I expect loyalty. As a young prosecutor, Comey had encountered the Gambino underboss, Sammy (the Bull) Gravano, and Trumps behavior called the mobster to mind, Comey wrote later in his memoir, A Higher Loyalty. The demand was like Sammy the Bulls Cosa Nostra induction ceremony. Such gangsters, Comey went on, created a particular kind of atmosphere around them: The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. Loyalty oaths.

Trump, Richman added, has the affect and sometimes the communication style of a mobster. Its a combination of clear signalling as to who has power and the source of that power with an obliqueness of expression that, intentionally, barely conceals the threat. Trump used the same tactics, Richman said, during a 2019 phone call to Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine, in which Trump leaned on him to look into the Biden family in exchange for unlocking a weapons sale. Richman said that in many RICO cases, the government will display charts that resemble the orderly hierarchy of the Ford Motor Company. But the Oval Office in the Trump years seemed more like a mob social club, in which people come in and out without clear titles, and access is freely given as long as they pledge fealty. If you say you have a good idea, youre told to run with it.

Paul Attanasio, who wrote Donnie Brasco, a 1997 Mob film starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, told me that Trump, though he deploys the swagger of a mafia boss, is in no way a wise mafia boss. It would be highly unusual for the boss to get involved and make a call like the one to Raffensperger, Attanasio said. Theres no way Vincent (the Chin) Gigante would make that call. Hed have someone do it for him. But its Trumps arrogance, his belief that he can do it better and successfully intimidate Raffensperger.

Nearly all the legal experts I spoke with are of the opinion that the RICO case in Georgia is compelling and well-constructed, but, with its immense cast of defendants and sprawling criminal narrative, it will probably take a very long time to resolve. Andrew Weissmann, a former chief of the Fraud Section of the Department of Justice and a lead prosecutor in Robert Muellers Russiagate investigations, pointed out that another of Williss RICO cases in Georgia is, after seven months, still in the jury-selection phase. (The advantage of the Georgia prosecution is that it is a state case, not a federal one, and therefore Trump could not pardon himself as President.) Although the Florida documents trial is, as a matter of evidence, a grim prospect for Trump, the prosecution there faces a potentially hostile judge and an uncertain jury pool. Alvin Braggs hush-money case in New York is, by far, the least urgent of the four prosecutions. The January 6th case, brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, in Washington, and alleging an attempt to overturn a national election, is an immensely daunting prospect for Trump.

This week, the former President, hoping to shift the imagery away from his imminent fingerprinting-and-mugshot session in Georgia, has declared it beneath his dignity to engage in a debate with his rivals in the race for the Republican nomination. Instead, he will subject himself to the feathery inquisition of Tucker Carlson on social media.

Yet Trump, the unwise wise guy, will eventually face less kindly examiners. Although he has long enjoyed the sleazy glamour and cynical counsel supplied by Mob-adjacent figures like Roy Cohn, his mentor in matters of conscience and the law, Trump has no code and shows no loyalty. Despite his mobster cosplay, in short, he lacks even a gangsters sense of dignity. Carmine (the Snake) Persico, for all his many sins, would have found Trump unworthy of the Cosa Nostra. Before the Mafias disintegration, a boss was obliged to help a fallen or legally entangled soldier. And yet Trump wont even pay the legal bills of Giuliani, his loyal sidekick. The most lasting image of Giuliani will not be of a valiant public servant inspiring a grieving city but of a cynical mook lying about stolen votes on Trumps behalf while rivulets of hair dye course down his cheek. Is there no honor among thieves? Or, as Murray Kempton put it, Where are the scungilli of yesteryear?

Excerpt from:
The Mobster Cosplay of Donald Trump - The New Yorker

Im going to begin this column with a rather unusual reading recommendation. If youve got an afternoon to kill and want to read 126 pages of heavily footnoted legal argument and historical analysis, I strongly recommend a law review article entitled The Sweep and Force of Section Three. Its a rather dull headline for a highly provocative argument: that Donald Trump is constitutionally disqualified from holding the office of president.

In the article, two respected conservative law professors, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, make the case that the text, history and tradition of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment a post-Civil War amendment that prohibited former public officials from holding office again if they engaged in insurrection or rebellion or gave aid or comfort to those who did all strongly point to the conclusion that Trump is ineligible for the presidency based on his actions on and related to Jan. 6, 2021. Barring a two-thirds congressional amnesty vote, Trumps ineligibility, Baude and Paulsen argue, is as absolute as if he were too young to be president or were not a natural-born citizen of the United States.

Its a fascinating and compelling argument that only grows more compelling with each painstakingly researched page. But as I was reading it, a single, depressing thought came to my mind. Baude and Paulsens argument may well represent the single most rigorous and definitive explanation of Section 3 ever put to paper, yet its difficult to imagine, at this late date, the Supreme Court ultimately either striking Trump from the ballot or permitting state officials to do so.

As powerful as Baude and Paulsens substantive argument is, the late date means that by the time any challenge to Trumps eligibility might reach the Supreme Court, voters may have already started voting in the Republican primaries. Millions of votes could have been cast. The Supreme Court is already reluctant to change election procedures on the eve of an election. How eager would it be to remove a candidate from the ballot after hes perhaps even clinched a primary?

While I believe the court should intervene even if the hour is late, its worth remembering that it would face this decision only because of the comprehensive failure of congressional Republicans. Let me be specific. There was never any way to remove Trump from American politics through the Democratic Party alone. Ending Trumps political career required Republican cooperation, and Republicans have shirked their constitutional duties, sometimes through sheer cowardice. They have punted their responsibilities to other branches of government or simply shrunk back in fear of the consequences.

In hindsight, for example, Republican inaction after Jan. 6 boggles the mind. Rather than remove Trump from American politics by convicting him in the Senate after his second impeachment, Republicans punted their responsibilities to the American legal system. As Mitch McConnell said when he voted to acquit Trump, We have a criminal justice system in this country. Yet not even a successful prosecution and felony conviction on any of the charges against him, in any of the multiple venues can disqualify Trump from serving as president. Because of G.O.P. cowardice, our nation is genuinely facing the possibility of a presidents taking the oath of office while also appealing one or more substantial prison sentences.

Republicans have also punted to the American voters, suggesting that any outstanding questions of Trumps fitness be decided at the ballot box. Its a recommendation with some real appeal. (In his most recent newsletter, my colleague Ross Douthat makes a powerful case that only politics can solve the problem of Donald Trump.) Give the people what they want is a core element of democratic politics, and if enough people want Trump, then who are American politicians or judges to deprive them? Yet the American founders (and the drafters of the 14th Amendment) also knew the necessity of occasionally checking the popular will, and the Constitution thus contains a host of safeguards designed to protect American democracy from majorities run amok. After all, if voting alone were sufficient to protect America from insurrectionist leaders, there would have been no need to draft or ratify Section 3.

Why are Republicans in Congress punting to voters and the legal system? For many of them, the answer lies in raw fear. First, there is the simple political fear of losing a House or Senate seat. In polarized, gerrymandered America, all too many Republican politicians face political risk only from their right, and that right appears to be overwhelmingly populated by Trumpists.

But theres another fear as well, that imposing accountability will only escalate American political division, leading to a tit-for-tat of prosecuted or disqualified politicians. This fear is sometimes difficult to take seriously. For example, conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro raised it, arguing that running for office now carries the legal risk of going to jail on all sides. Yet he had himself written an entire book calling for racketeering charges against Barack Obama.

That said, the idea that vengeful MAGA Republicans might prosecute Democrats out of spite is credible enough to raise concerns outside the infotainment right. Michael McConnell, a conservative professor I admire a great deal (and one who is no fan of Donald Trump), expressed concern about the Section 3 approach to disqualifying Trump. I worry that this approach could empower partisans to seek disqualification every time a politician supports or speaks in support of the objectives of a political riot, he wrote, adding, Imagine how bad actors will use this theory.

In other words, Trump abused America once, and the fear is that if we hold him accountable, he or his allies will abuse our nation again. I think Professor McConnells warnings are correct. Trump and his allies are already advertising their plans for revenge. But if past practice is any guide, Trump and his allies will abuse our nation whether we hold him accountable or not. The abuse is the constant reality of Trump and the movement he leads. Accountability is the variable dependent on the courage and will of key American leaders and only accountability has any real hope of stopping the abuse.

A fundamental reality of human existence is that vice often leaves virtue with few good options. Evil men can attach catastrophic risks to virtually any course of action, however admirable. But we can and should learn lessons from history. George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two of our greatest presidents, both faced insurrectionary movements, and their example should teach us today. When Washington faced an open revolt during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, he didnt appease the rebels, instead mobilizing overwhelming force to meet the moment and end the threat.

In 1861, Lincoln rejected advice to abandon Fort Sumter in South Carolina in the hope of avoiding direct confrontation with the nascent Confederate Army. Instead, he ordered the Navy to resupply the fort. The Confederates bombarded Sumter and launched the deadliest war in American history, but there was no point at which Lincoln was going to permit rebels to blackmail the United States into extinction.

If you think the comparisons to the Whiskey Rebellion or the Civil War are overwrought, just consider the consequences had Trumps plan succeeded. I have previously described Jan. 6 as Americas near-death day for good reason. If Mike Pence had declared Trump the victor or even if the certification of the election had been delayed one shudders to consider what would have happened next. We would have faced the possibility of two presidents being sworn in at once, with the Supreme Court (and ultimately federal law enforcement, or perhaps even the Army) being tasked with deciding which one was truly legitimate.

Thankfully, the American legal system has worked well enough to knock the MAGA movement on its heels. Hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters face criminal justice. The movements corrupt lawyers face their own days in court. Trump is indicted in four jurisdictions. Yet all of that work can be undone and every triumph will turn to defeat if a disqualified president reclaims power in large part through the fear of his foes.

But the story of Washington and Lincoln doesnt stop with their decisive victories. While 10 members of the Whiskey Rebellion were tried for treason, only two were convicted, and Washington ultimately pardoned them both. On the eve of final victory, Lincolns second Inaugural Address contained words of grace that echo through history, With malice toward none, with charity for all.

Victory is not incompatible with mercy, and mercy can be indispensable after victory. But while the threat remains, so must the resolve, even if it means asking the Supreme Court to intervene at the worst possible time. Let me end where I began. Read Baude and Paulsen and not just for their compelling legal argument. Read and remember what it was like when people of character and conviction inhabited the American political class. They have given us the tools to defend the American experiment. All we need is the will.

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Opinion | Appeasing Donald Trump Won't Work - The New York Times