Robert DeNiro.  (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Dear Commons Community,

Over the weekend, one CNN commentator echoed actor Robert De Niro’s line  that President Biden “on a gurney” is still better than another four years of Trump in the Oval Office.

In December 2023, when asked in a Rolling Stone interview if Biden is the “right guy” to take on Trump, De Niro answered, “I think that if Biden was on a gurney and couldn’t move anything but his eyes to blink ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ he’s our person. There’s no way that he’s not the guy to take Trump down.”

In a call to action, De Niro says he hopes everybody gets out to vote.

Sitting down with the Rolling Stone, De Niro, 80, covered a wide range of topics from politics, to the actor’s strike to welcoming his seventh child and losing his 19-year-old grandson to a drug overdose.

“It’s a lot,” he told Rolling Stones while choking up. “I have no choice but to plow through. And my biggest concern now, with everything else, is us getting out of this situation with a monster in Trump. This is a classic grift. This is unreal.”

“If you look at other totalitarian countries like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it will affect everybody in ways you can’t even imagine,” De Niro added.

The actor said he did not think Trump was a “monster” when he was first elected, but his thoughts have since shifted towards the former president.

“I thought, ‘Maybe he’ll straighten out.’ Now, this guy is beyond dangerous and I just hope people can realize it,” he said. “Once you go down that road, it won’t be easy to come back.”

In December, Trump railed against De Niro after the actor criticized the former president in a speech last month at the Gotham Awards. Trump responded, arguing De Niro “should focus on his life, which is a mess, rather than the lives of others.”

Asked about Trump’s response to the speech, De Niro said, “The problem is people respond to him. God forbid he did become president — this is a road where, if we go down it, it will be very hard to turn around.”

De Niro even quoted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a staunch critic of Trump, telling Rolling Stone, “As Liz Cheney said, ‘He will not leave,’” and later called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s alleged efforts to stay in power “unbelievable.”

De Niro has been a vocal critic of Trump in recent years and recently has upped his warning against another White House term for Trump, saying, “Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator.”

In a statement in October, De Niro said he spent a lot of time studying criminals, saying, “I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump,” adding, “When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.”

Evil indeed!

Tony

Joe Biden and Lloyd Doggett.  Courtesy of CNN.

Dear Commons Community,

A growing number of Democratic leaders are saying they want Joe Biden to step aside for the good of the party – and the country. As reported by CNN.

Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas was the first to break ranks.

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said in his statement Tuesday.

“There’s a large and increasing group of House Democrats concerned about the president’s candidacy, representing a broad swath of the caucus,” another House Democratic lawmaker told CNN on condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “We are deeply concerned about his trajectory and his ability to win. We want to give him space to make a decision [to step aside], but we will be increasingly vocal about our concerns if he doesn’t.”

Biden is expected to meet today with Democratic governors and congressional leaders, the White House said yesterday. The announcement came after CNN reported that some governors expressed concerns about the president’s debate performance. The governors, one source said, were worried about going public with their concerns out of fear it would lead to Biden digging in further.

CNN talked to more than two dozen current and former Democratic officials, as well as donors and longtime Biden allies, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating Biden. Many of these people say they have already made up their minds that the president should quit his campaign, a decision some of them think he needs to announce this week.

They have held off going to Biden directly, hoping he would make the decision himself, but patience is wearing thin, multiple Democrats told CNN, amid signs that Biden has taken no steps to seriously consider the mounting concerns. He is poised to travel to swing states this weekend, aides said, a sign that he has no plans of changing course. Yesterday, ABC News announced Biden will sit down with George Stephanopoulos for his first TV interview since the debate, with clips airing on Friday.

Initially, there was hope that the president’s family would convince him to step aside, given how badly the debate went. However, at a Biden retreat Sunday at Camp David, it became apparent the president’s family rallied around his decision to continue his campaign, blaming staff for his missteps.

“One word you know about Biden: stubborn,” said one senior Democratic official who has publicly supported Biden in the past but who privately thinks he needs to step aside. “They are trying to give him the space to realize what a disaster this is.”

And while the Biden campaign has insisted the debate was just a bad night for the 81-year-old president, the Democrats who want him to step aside say it was not a one-off incident that can be fixed.

“This is not like Obama being rusty for a debate,” said a senior Democratic official, referring to former President Barack Obama’s lackluster performance in his first debate against Republican opponent Mitt Romney in 2012.

“[Biden] might be able to survive this if this was the only incident. But it won’t be the only incident,” said a senior Capitol Hill Democratic official.

“We have to be honest with ourselves that it wasn’t just a horrible night,” Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley told Kasie Hunt on “CNN This Morning” yesterday. “He clearly has to understand, I think, what you’re getting to here is that his decision not only impacts who’s going to serve in the White House the next four years but who’s going to serve in the Senate, who’s going to serve in the House, and it will have implications for decades to come.”

During an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Biden to participate in multiple interviews with journalists in the aftermath of his debate performance.

The California Democrat, who emphasized it is Biden’s decision about whether to step aside, said she has heard “mixed” responses to the debate from donors and others in her Democratic network.

“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” Pelosi said, referring to Biden’s debate performance. She quickly added that this was a legitimate question for former President Donald Trump as well, citing his repeated lies during the debate.

Do the right thing, Joe.  Step aside!

Tony

Credit.  Damon Winter/New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

On Sunday, The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called on President Biden to abandon his reelection campaign following his poor debate showing on Thursday night, warning that deciding to run was ill-advised and made him no better than his adversary, former President Trump.

“He’s being selfish. He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers. He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself,” she started the column.

“I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about the other president.”

In a column titled “The Ghastly vs. the Ghostly,” Dowd joined several of her New York Times columnist colleagues on Saturday morning to call on the president to step aside. On Friday, the Times editorial board also called on Biden to drop out of the race.

“He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans,” the board said. “More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”

Dowd also pointed to his debate struggles, but suggested that they indicated a much larger issue for his would-be second term.

“He didn’t just have an off night,” she wrote. “Biden looked ghostly, with that trepidatious gait; he couldn’t remember his rehearsed lines or numbers.”

“He has age-related issues, and those go in only one direction,” she continued.

Two years ago, Dowd encouraged the president to step aside, invoking Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s untimely death as a cautionary tale. 

“The timing of your exit can determine your place in the history books,” she wrote at the time. 

While the Biden camp clings on to his reelection campaign, Dowd encouraged his staff and the first lady to abandon the race in order to preserve his legacy.

“It is because Biden is beloved, and because he has real accomplishments as president, that he needs to stop this nerve-racking, maddening tightrope walk to the Oval,” she concluded.

Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Supreme Court yesterday ruled for the first time that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, extending the delay in the Washington criminal case against Donald Trump on charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss and all but ending prospects the former president could be tried before the November election.

In a historic 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative majority, including the three justices appointed by Trump, narrowed the case against him and returned it to the trial court to determine what is left of special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment.

Trump celebrated a “BIG WIN” on X. President Joe Biden said the justices set “a dangerous precedent (that) undermines the rule of this nation.”

The ruling reflected a muscular view of presidential power, and left dissenting judges to criticize it as undermining a core democratic principle that no person is above the law. As reported by the Associated Press.

The court’s decision highlighted how the justices have been thrust into an impactful role in the November presidential election. Earlier, they had rejected efforts to bar him from the ballot because of his actions following the 2020 election. The court last week also limited an obstruction charge faced by Trump and used against hundreds of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The split among the justices also in many ways mirrored the political divide in the country.

“Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. “And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.”

The chief justice insisted that the president “is not above the law.” But in a fiery dissent for the court’s three liberals, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”

Reading from her opinion in the courtroom, Sotomayor said, “Because our Constitution does not shield a former president from answering for criminal and treasonous acts, I dissent.” Sotomayor said the decision “makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of government, that no man is above the law.”

The protection afforded presidents by the court, she said, “is just as bad as it sounds, and it is baseless.”

<!– The following message will be displayed to users with unsupported browsers: –> Your browser does not support the <code>iframe</code> HTML tag. Try viewing this in a modern browser like Chrome, Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer 9 or later.

Trump posted in all capital letters on his social media network shortly after the decision was released: “BIG WIN FOR OUR CONSTITUTION AND DEMOCRACY. PROUD TO BE AN AMERICAN!”

Biden, in evening remarks from the White House, cited accepted restraints on presidential power all the way back to George Washington and bemoaned that “for all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do.”

Smith’s office declined to comment on the ruling.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer denounced the ruling as “a disgraceful decision,” made with the help of the three justices that Trump appointed.

“It undermines SCOTUS’s credibility and suggests political influence trumps all in our courts today,” the New York Democrat said on X.

The justices knocked out one aspect of the indictment. The opinion found Trump is “absolutely immune” from prosecution for alleged conduct involving discussions with the Justice Department.

Trump is also “at least presumptively immune” from allegations that he tried to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s electoral vote win on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors can try to make the case that Trump’s pressure on Pence still can be part of the case against him, Roberts wrote.

The court directed a fact-finding analysis on one of the more striking allegations in the indictment — that Trump participated in a scheme to enlist fake electors in battleground states won by Biden who would falsely assert that Trump had won. Both sides had dramatically different interpretations as to whether that effort could be construed as official, and the conservative justices said determining which side is correct would require additional analysis at the trial court level.

Roberts’ opinion further restricted prosecutors by prohibiting them from using any official acts as evidence in trying to prove a president’s unofficial actions violated the law. One example not relevant to this case but which came up in arguments was the hypothetical payment of a bribe in return for an ambassadorial appointment.

Under Monday’s decision, a former president could be prosecuted for accepting a bribe, but prosecutors could not mention the official act, the appointment, in their case.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the rest of Roberts’ opinion, parted company on this point. “The Constitution does not require blinding juries to the circumstances surrounding conduct for which Presidents can be held liable,” Barrett wrote.

She also described as unnecessary the analysis of the fake electors claim. “I see no plausible argument for barring prosecution of that alleged conduct,” Barrett wrote.

The work of figuring out how to proceed will fall to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who would preside over Trump’s trial.

Trump still could face a trial, said Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller. “But the fact remains that it is almost impossible to happen before the election.”

David Becker, an election law expert and the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation and Research, called the breadth of immunity granted to Trump “incredibly broad” and “deeply disturbing.”

“Almost anything that a president does with the executive branch is characterized as an official act,” he said on a call with reporters following the ruling. He said that “for any unscrupulous individual holding the seat of the Oval Office who might lose an election, the way I read this opinion is it could be a roadmap for them seeking to stay in power.”

The ruling was the last of the term, and it came more than two months after the court heard arguments, far slower than in other epic high court cases involving the presidency, including the Watergate tapes case.

The Republican former president has denied doing anything wrong and has said this prosecution and three others are politically motivated to try to keep him from returning to the White House.

In May, Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony, in a New York court. He was found guilty of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment made during the 2016 presidential election to a porn actor who says she had sex with him, which he denies. After Monday’s ruling, Trump’s lawyers asked the New York judge who presided over that trial to set aside his conviction and delay his sentencing. He still faces three other indictments.

Smith is leading the two federal inquiries of the former president, both of which have led to criminal charges. The Washington case focuses on Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election after he lost to Biden. The case in Florida revolves around the mishandling of classified documents. A separate case, in Georgia, also turns on Trump’s actions after his defeat in 2020.

If Trump’s Washington trial does not take place before the 2024 election and he is not given another four years in the White House, he presumably would stand trial soon thereafter.

But if he wins, he could appoint an attorney general who would seek the dismissal of this case and the other federal prosecution he faces. He could also attempt to pardon himself if he reclaims the White House. He could not pardon himself for the conviction in state court in New York.

The Supreme Court that heard the case included three justices appointed by Trump — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett.

Before the Supreme Court got involved, a trial judge and a three-judge appellate panel had ruled unanimously that Trump could be prosecuted for actions undertaken while in the White House and in the run-up to Jan. 6.

Chutkan ruled against Trump’s immunity claim in December. In her ruling, Chutkan said the office of the president “does not confer a lifelong ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ pass.”

Not a good day for our country!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon is scheduled to report to a federal prison in Connecticut today to serve a four-month sentence on contempt charges for defying a subpoena in the congressional investigation into the U.S. Capitol attack.

A judge had allowed Bannon to stay free for nearly two years while he appealed, but ordered him to report to prison after an appeals court panel upheld his contempt of Congress convictions.

The Supreme Court rejected his last-minute appeal to stave off his sentence.

A jury found Bannon guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition with the Jan. 6 House Committee and a second for refusing to provide documents related to his involvement in the Republican ex-president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. As reported by ABC News.

Defense attorneys have argued the case raises issues that should be examined by the Supreme Court, including Bannon’s previous lawyer’s belief that the subpoena was invalid because former President Donald Trump had asserted executive privilege. Prosecutors, though, say Bannon had left the White House years before and Trump had never invoked executive privilege in front of the committee.

Bannon’s appeal will continue to play out, and Republican House leaders have put their support behind stepping in to assert the Jan. 6 committee was improperly created, effectively trying to deem the subpoena Bannon received as illegitimate.

Another Trump aide, trade adviser Peter Navarro, has also been convicted of contempt of Congress. He reported to prison in March to serve his four-month sentence after the Supreme Court refused his bid to delay the sentence.

Bannon is also facing criminal charges in New York state court alleging he duped donors who gave money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy, fraud and other charges, and that trial has been postponed until at least the end of September.

If there ever was someone who deserved incarceration, it is Bannon!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A summer Covid wave is “building” in the United Kingdom following an increase in hospital admissions amid the rise of the new “Flirt” variant.  As reported by The Telegraph.

The prevalence of illness caused by Covid is harder to quantify since widespread testing was axed, but hospital admissions indicate a summer wave was underway by mid-June after the number of cases rose by a quarter in a single week.

The number of people hospitalised with Covid was 3.31 per 100,000 in the week ending June 16, up from 2.67 the week before, and was even higher among the elderly, peaking at 34.70 in the over 85s.

There was also a 29 per cent surge in positive cases in the week to June 22, although the majority of testing is now done in hospital and healthcare settings.

Dr Jamie Lopez Bernal, consultant epidemiologist for immunisation at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), said it was “seeing an increase in Covid-19 across all indicators, including hospitalisations”.

Experts fear the existing vaccines may not provide the same level of protection against the new variants, which are several mutations away from those that initially spread.

The main Flirt variants are known as KP.2 and KP.3, and accounted for a combined 40 per cent of Covid in April – the last time UKHSA published a breakdown of the variants.

Driving force

While the KP.2 was the more prevalent of the two then, it’s believed that KP.3 is the driving force behind a summer wave. Both are mutations from the previously dominant JN.1 variant, and scientists believe they allow the virus to spread more easily.

Prof Steve Griffin of Leeds University said: “This is clearly early days, but it certainly looks as though yet another Covid wave is building.

“If the rise in hospitalisations continues, this is obviously worrying. Although we’ve just had a spring booster campaign for vulnerable populations, the uptake was lower than in 2023.

“There is a considerable difference between the current vaccines and circulating viruses,” he added.

Around 4.1 million of the seven million eligible for a spring Covid booster took up the offer, which ends on Sunday, meaning 40 per cent won’t get the extra protection despite being deemed the most vulnerable. More than a third of care-home residents have not had a booster either.

Prof Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick University, told the i: “This is a wake-up call. The virus hasn’t gone away and is certainly not a seasonal infection.”

‘Part of everyday life’

UKHSA said it still needed “more data” on the new variants to understand how severe and transmissible they might be, and that it was “impossible” to tell at this stage whether these variants were behind the rise in hospital admissions and cases.

Prof Paul Hunter, an epidemiology expert from the University of East Anglia, said the increases should not be a cause for alarm, however, because Covid was now part of everyday life.

“I think we’re probably seeing about as much infection this year as we were seeing last year – a little bit less, but not hugely less,” he told the BBC.

“We are all of us going to get repeated Covid infections from birth through to death,” he said. Generally what we’ve seen is that over the last three years, four years, the severity of illness associated with Covid has gone down a lot.

“Ultimately, it’s going to become another cause of the common cold and, for many people, that’s what it is now.”

He added: “To be honest, you can’t really avoid it because it’s so common.”

Tony