Sunrise — 5:34, 5:38, 5:41, 5:43, 5:45, 5:47.

"Banning TikTok is so obviously unconstitutional... that even the Act’s sponsors recognized that reality, and therefore have tried mightily to depict the law not as a ban at all..."

"... but merely a regulation of TikTok’s ownership.... In reality, there is no choice.... [A forced sale ] is simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally.... If Congress can do this, it can circumvent the First Amendment by invoking national security and ordering the publisher of any individual newspaper or website to sell to avoid being shut down...."

So reads the filing quoted in "TikTok files court challenge to U.S. law that could lead to ban/The filing citing First Amendment and other grounds could prove to be an existential fight for one of the world’s most popular apps" (WaPo).

"Congress has never before crafted a two-tiered speech regime with one set of rules for one named platform, and another set of rules for everyone else.... [The government acted without] proof of a compelling interest, but on speculative and analytically flawed concerns about data security and content manipulation — concerns that, even if grounded in fact, could be addressed through far less restrictive and more narrowly tailored means."

"Stormy Daniels is talking about going to the bathroom in Trump’s hotel suite... Daniels keeps chuckling as she describes the scene, as if she's giving an interview."

Writes Maggie Haberman at the NYT.

I think "keeps chuckling... as if she's giving an interview" reveals Haberman's opinion that Daniels is not a good witness.

Then there's this from Jonah Bromwich, one of the other NYT reporters watching the trial:

"Is it possible that the prosecution thinks this works as a way to humiliate Trump?"

I wrote at the end of the last post, which is puzzling over why the prosecution has called Stormy Daniels to the witness stand. The desire to humiliate others is a very low form of self-gratification. It's a big theme in porn — or so I've read — but I won't further expound on the parallels between porn and politics.

I'm just starting a new post on this theme because the very next thing I read was a display of the desire to humiliate Trump. It's Jennifer Rubin, at The Washington Post, in "The New York trial is wearing down Trump — and it shows/His nodding off in court is a sign that he is weaker and more vulnerable than ever":

The trial is aggravating Trump’s lifelong fear of humiliation and his insistence on being the toughest bully on the block.... Any objective observer would acknowledge that things have not been going his way, to put it mildly....

"The dramatic decision to call Ms. Daniels to the stand would carry both possible benefits and definite risks for prosecutors...."

"Her presence would let Mr. Trump’s defense lawyers attack Ms. Daniels as an extortionist.... Ms. Daniels could also offer context about the environment in which she sold her story of their 2006 encounter, which Mr. Trump denies. She was shopping the story as Mr. Trump’s campaign was reeling in 2016 from the disclosure of a recording on the set of Access Hollywood in which he bragged of groping women. Michael Bachner, a New York City defense lawyer not involved in the case, said that if prosecutors did not call Ms. Daniels to testify, 'it would just be a glaring hole' that the defense would question.... Mr. Trump’s lawyers contend that he did not know that the checks he signed for Mr. Cohen were not for legal fees, and that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump’s employees were responsible for any false records. They would be likely to portray Ms. Daniels as someone whose only real connection to Mr. Trump was wanting to be a possible contestant on his reality show...."

From "Stormy Daniels, Once Paid to Keep Quiet, Could Testify Against Trump/Ms. Daniels could take the stand this week, allowing jurors to see and hear from the person at the center of the criminal case against the former president" (NYT).

I would think the prosecutors want to avoid calling her:

"Respectability politics."

If that's a term of art, it's new to me. I'm seeing it, with a link to another article, in "Senators Need to Stop the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act," a NYT column by Michelle Goldberg. Context:

Some pro-Palestinian demonstrators seem to believe, given the moral enormity of mass death, displacement and starvation in Gaza, that deferring to mainstream Jewish sensitivities means buckling to so-called respectability politics, which whitewash horror in the name of civility. “To the Jewish students, faculty and trustees blocking divestment and urging the violent crackdowns on campus: You threaten everyone’s safety,” said a recent communiqué from the Columbia Law chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a left-wing group that’s been providing legal support to the protesters.

The statement disdains the ethos of nonviolence, quoting Black Panther leader Kwame Ture, formerly Stokely Carmichael: “In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.” Within the movement, I imagine such rhetoric functions as a sign of total commitment, a no-going-back rejection of hollow liberal pieties. Outside of it, to the extent that anyone takes this language seriously, it serves to stoke a raging panic about the protests that both distracts from the war and feeds a growing backlash that threatens academic freedom....

The linked article is "What are the politics of respectability during a genocide?" by Maryam Iqbal in the Columbia Spectator. Excerpt:

Sunrise — 5:37, 5:39, 5:42, 5:45.

"Justice Merchan acknowledged that jailing Mr. Trump was 'the last thing' he wanted to do, but explained that it was his responsibility to 'protect the dignity of the justice system.'"

"The judge said that he understood 'the magnitude of such a decision' and that jailing Mr. Trump would be a last resort. He noted: 'You are the former president of the United States, and possibly the next president as well.' ... Mr. Trump stared straight at [the judge].... The violation for which he was punished on Monday stemmed from an incident on April 22, when Mr. Trump [said the jury]... had been picked 'so fast' and was 'mostly all Democrat,' adding, 'It’s a very unfair situation.'... Although [those comments] came before the judge issued his first contempt order — and initially warned Mr. Trump of jail time — Justice Merchan appeared exasperated by the continued violations.... 'The last thing I want to do is put you in jail,' Justice Merchan said, adding quickly, 'But at the end of the day, I have a job to do.'..."

From "Judge Cites Trump for Contempt, and Says He Is Attacking the Rule of Law/Donald J. Trump again broke a gag order meant to bar him from attacking participants in his criminal trial, Justice Juan M. Merchan ruled. He threatened the former president with jail" (NYT).

I guess Trump also has a job to do — run for President. He doesn't want to go to jail, but at the end of the day....

And here's Alan Dershowitz,  yesterday, denouncing the judge for not understanding free speech law and imposing a prior restraint:

"I like diversity. Diversité as you would say. I like diversité" — said Donald Trump.

Hilarious. Quoted in "Trump's real-time reviews of 2024 VP possibles and other surrogates," at Axios, which obtained an audio recording of Trump making comments about the various possible candidates.

He was talking about Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.). 

Go to the link to read Trump's assessment of the 11 possibles. What struck me — other than his jocose Frenchification of the word "diversity" — is how he had nothing but good things to say about each of them. Not a shred of negativity. And it's not as if he just inarticulately called them all "great."

"At the end of the day, I walked out of the courthouse with another journalist.... He didn’t buy Hicks’s tears."

"'Come on,' he said. 'She’s a crisis-communications professional.' She’d been terse at crucial moments for the prosecution, and generous with her praise of Trump. ('A very good multitasker and a very hard worker,' she called him.) Though she’d confirmed that Trump and his circle were worried that sex scandals would hurt him in the 2016 election, she’d also testified that Trump had asked his staff to hide newspapers from Melania when the Wall Street Journal published an article about McDougal. ('I don’t think he wanted anyone in his family to be hurt or embarrassed by anything that was happening on the campaign,' she said. 'He wanted them to be proud of him.') It wasn’t clear if her testimony had helped either side. Maybe it had helped Hope Hicks."

Writes Eric Lach, in "What Is Hope Hicks Crying About? During Donald Trump’s criminal trial, the inscrutable former White House aide was equally inscrutable on the witness stand, despite breaking out into tears while testifying" (The New Yorker).

"This shifting landscape is forcing companies and consultants to adapt on the fly, with many acting preemptively to guard against the legal threats..."

"... that have led some firms to recast or discard race-based initiatives. They’re renaming diversity programs, overhauling internal DEI teams and working closely with lawyers. Some are moving away from using racial and gender considerations in hiring and promotion.... Meanwhile, the DEI industry — which was worth an estimated $9 billion in 2023... — is also rethinking its public face, consultants say.... [I]nstead of referring to DEI, [Johnny C. Taylor Jr., chief executive of the Society for Human Resource Management] switched to calling these efforts 'IED,' putting the focus on 'inclusion' as DEI accrued cultural and political baggage.... Eric Ellis, CEO of Integrity Development, a DEI consultancy, said he’s seen the 'branding merry-go-round' playing out for decades, tracing back to the wake of the civil rights movement. He expects the language to keep changing in response to public attacks, especially those by high-profile figures like Elon Musk, who in January wrote on his social media platform X that 'DEI is just another word for racism.'... Joelle Emerson, chief executive of DEI consultancy Paradigm [said] 'DEI has only been the acronym du jour since 2020... Regardless of what we call it, we’ve done a really poor job storytelling what this work is actually about.'"

From "DEI is getting a new name. Can it dump the political baggage? Under mounting legal and political pressure, companies’ DEI tactics are evolving" (WaPo)(free access link).

Switching DEI to IED... brilliant. Either you're proud of what you're doing or you're trying to hide it. And if you think of your real-world justification as a matter of "storytelling," you're tipping your hand. Do you even believe yourself?

"This is the final battle. With you at my side, we will demolish the Deep State."

"We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the Communists, Marxists, and fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country. We will rout the fake news media. And we will liberate America from these villains. Once and for all."

Said Trump, in campaign ad video here, at Truth Social.

It's a super hero movie. And we are his sidekick. 

"The free show... was a grand finale to the pop superstar’s latest world tour, which has delivered 80 performances since last October...."

"[C]oncert crowd sizes can be difficult to gauge; Riotur, the municipality’s tourism department, estimated that 1.6 million people flooded onto the 2.4-mile stretch of sand on Saturday that had been turned into a roughly $12 million playground surrounding the 8,700-square-foot stage. It was the culmination of days of Madonna-mania in the city, where talk of the singer, 65, was inescapable. Her songs spilled out of stores and car stereos. Fans assembled outside her hotel and shouted her name. Updates about the concert, which was broadcast on the network Globo TV, dominated local media reports...."

From "Madonna Brings Massive Free Concert to Rio, Capping Celebration Tour/The pop superstar performed a final date on her global trek marking four decades of hits: a set on Copacabana Beach before the largest live crowd of her career" (NYT).

"'Here we are, the most beautiful place in the world,' Madonna announced.... 'This is magic.'... 'You have always been there for me,' she said. 'That flag: that green-and-yellow flag, I see it everywhere. I feel it in my heart.'"

"China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has diminished the role of women at work and in public office. There are no female members of Mr. Xi’s inner circle..."

"... or the Politburo, the executive policymaking body. He has invoked more traditional roles for women, as caretakers and mothers, in planning a new 'childbearing culture' to address a shrinking population. But groups of women around China are quietly reclaiming their own identities. Many are from a generation that grew up with more freedom than their mothers. Women in Shanghai, profoundly shaken by a two-month Covid lockdown in 2022, are being driven by a need to build community. 'I think everyone living in this city seems to have reached this stage that they want to explore more about the power of women,' said Du Wen, the founder of Her, a bar that hosts salon discussions.... At quietly advertised events, women question misogynistic tropes in Chinese culture. 'Why are lonely ghosts always female?' one woman recently asked, referring to Chinese literature’s depiction of homeless women after death...."

From "In China, Ruled by Men, Women Quietly Find a Powerful Voice/Women in Shanghai gather in bars, salons and bookstores to reclaim their identities as the country’s leader calls for China to adopt a 'childbearing culture'" (NYT).

An idea about structuring the presidential debates to hurt Trump that I think is more likely to help him.

I'm reading "Donald Trump Is 'A Colossal A**hole,' Jeffrey Katzenberg Says; Hasn’t Yet Reached Out To Taylor Swift To Endorse 'Decent' Joe Biden" (Deadline Hollywood). I just want to focus on one thing, Katzenberg's idea about how to rein in the Trump "chaos" at the presidential debates:

“When you look back and you just say, Okay, well, there’s a solution for that everybody in this room knows, everyone in media and entertainments knows, it’s very simple,” Katzenberg said of the possible rules of any Biden vs Trump face-to-face to stop the latter from steamrolling over everyone. “If you have two minutes to speak, you speak, and then at the end of two minutes the mic goes dead. Then you go to 30 seconds as a reply, and then the mic goes dead.”

AKA – Donald Trump’s worst nightmare.

Welcome to Trump's nightmare. I say he could nail this limitation. He can make very pithy statements quickly. He can either adapt to the microphone shut-off and speak clearly and shut up, or he can run on and interrupt anyway, and just rattle Biden and leave us wondering what he said. The lip-reading effort could go viral. Can't A.I. read lips and insert Trump's voice? Meanwhile, Biden is the one whose mind is slowing and who garbles his speech, fails to keep his talking points straight, and wanders into puzzling personal anecdotes. I think the stricter discipline would be more likely to hurt Biden. 

But why am I saying this? You tell me:

Why is Althouse wafting this theory?

To intrigue us and invite elevating conversation

To help Trump (by encouraging the elite to avoid the mic shut-off)

To help Biden (by encouraging the elite to avoid the mic shut-off)

To promote fairness and keep the playing field level

To make Jeffrey Katzenberg and his ilk look crazed and dumb

Because she enjoys the free play of conversational interruptions

 

pollcode.com free polls

Sandhill cranes listen, then speak.

Just now, on the shore of Lake Mendota.