The Week Ahead

December 15, 2024

You can’t make this stuff up.

Trump 2.0 looks like it will be as full of grift as the first administration was. This gentleman, Massad Boulos, is Trump’s pick to be his Middle East advisor. He just coincidentally happens to be Tiffany Trump’s father-in-law. He is not an experienced natural security expert, but he was born in Lebanon and holds citizenship in four countries. Boulas says he has not visited the region in years.

According to a report in the New York Times, Boulos told a reporter in October that his company is worth billions, and Trump called him a “highly respected leader in the business world, with extensive experience on the international scene.” But it turns out the company he runs for his father-in-law, selling trucks and heavy equipment in Nigeria, made a profit of less than $66,000 last year.

That’s who Trump will turn to for advice in the highly volatile area, where there is a possibility of peace but also a possibility of more, and more expansive, war. The selection would be laughable if it weren’t a critical point in a critical part of the world with a president who has little to no substantive knowledge about foreign policy stakes or the region.

That’s just one of the Trump nominations that seem to be less about what’s good for the country and more about cronyism. Since Matt Gaetz withdrew, none of his other nominees have called by the wayside. Republican senators seem to be getting in line with Trump, or perhaps they just fear the prospect of facing a primary challenge in the midterm election—it amounts to the same thing.

Pete Hegseth, accused of a sexual assault he says was consensual sex, is still in the running for the Defense Department. He’s said he won’t drink if confirmed. Kash Patel could pull the levers of power at the FBI with one hand while holding his revenge list in the other. Robert Kennedy Jr. has a history of rejecting science in favor of conspiracy theories. Polio survivor Mitch McConnell warned Kennedy off of efforts to question that vaccine after news surfaced that one of his key advisors tried to get it off the market. And Tulsi Gabbard, whose prior sympathy for the Assad regime, now deposed in Syria, is even more troubling as we see the insides of his torture prisons and hear the stories of people released, many after over a decade, from these inhumane conditions.

These nominees, many of whom would not have to be rejected in a normal presidency because they would never be made—even a whiff of alcohol abuse would be enough to keep someone out of a position with access to the nuclear codes—will likely be the most pressing of the Trump 2.0 issues we will contend with this week. It’s a good time to take a few minutes to reach out to your senators, even, or perhaps especially, Republican ones, to let them know you don’t approve. We don’t have to make it easy for them. That’s one thing we can all do.

But there’s more coming this week. So much that I’ll apologize in advance for the length of tonight’s piece, which you may want to read in more than one sitting. (I’ll try to go easy tomorrow.) In fact, there is so much in store for us in the week ahead that the deluge is emblematic of the challenge we face with the new Trump Administration. We’ve been discussing these questions almost since he was elected: How do you stay informed without becoming overwhelmed? What are the important parts we should take away from the overwhelming load of stories we’re seeing—and not seeing because there is so much? It doesn’t seem to be slowing down, even as we head into the holidays.

First, take a breath and remember that this is what authoritarians do. They flood the zone so people can’t focus on any one thing and can’t discern what is most important. They obscure the through lines, and they do it deliberately. So we are going to have to be just as deliberate about digesting the news—that’s what I’m working on.

Here are just some of the nascent developments that we can expect to hear more about this week:

Texas AG Goes After An Out-of-State Medicated Abortion Provider

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit to enjoin a New York physician, Maggie Carpenter, from her lawful telemedicine practice, which includes prescribing abortion drugs that can then be delivered by mail. In Texas v. Margaret Dayley Carpenter, Paxton asks a Texas state court judge to stop her. He claims, in an argument that could, by the way, be logically extended to restrict out of state doctors from treating Texas residents even if they physically travel to see them, that her teleheath practice in New York can be regulated by the state of Texas.

The complaint alleges, “No physician shall treat or prescribe residents of the State of Texas with telehealth services, via communications technology, unless the individual possesses a full Texas medical license … In addition, the validity of a prescription issued as a result of telemedicine medical service is determined by the same standards that would apply to the issuance of a prescription in an in-person setting.” In other words, Texas women should be prohibited from accessing abortion in other states because it’s illegal in Texas. That’s not the way this country has ever worked, whether it’s people traveling out of state to smoke marijuana, drink on Sundays, participate in lotteries, or any other number of things.

This lawsuit comes on the heels of Trump’s statement to Kristen Welker last week on Meet the Press that he wouldn’t act to restrict access to abortion medication on a national basis. Paxton apparently decided to step in and tee up the issue. Inevitably, this approach and the question of just how far a state can go to prevent its residents from accessing medical care that is available in other states is headed towards the Supreme Court. Are there five votes for moving us towards a national ban on abortion? We’ll find out in this case, or a similar one. The issue is very important.

Paxton’s complaint includes a recitation of one woman’s situation. Note that the offending conduct seems to be making decisions for herself about her own body: “About mid-May 2024, a 20-year-old female resident of Collin County, Texas became pregnant. The mother of the unborn child did not communicate her pregnancy to the biological father of the unborn child. The mother did not have any life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from the pregnancy that placed her at risk of death or any serious risk of substantial impairment. The mother proceeded to utilize telemedicine or telehealth services and received, through Carpenter, two abortion-inducing drugs or prescriptions.”

The woman referenced above experienced bleeding issues after taking the drugs and asked to be taken to the hospital. Paxton writes, “The biological father of the unborn child, upon learning this information, concluded that the biological mother of the unborn child had intentionally withheld information from him regarding her pregnancy, and he further suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child. The biological father, upon returning to the residence in Collin County, discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.” It couldn’t be any more clear what’s at stake here. It’s not the life of the mother, and it’s really not about the fetus. It’s about the man, who should be able to control the woman’s decisions. God forbid women keep secrets from men and decide for themselves. This is a civil suit, not a prosecution of a pregnant woman—at least for now.

Texas wants to be able to enforce its laws, which it is entitled to do within its borders. But it also wants to enforce them elsewhere, where, basic principle of federalism here, they don’t apply. “It is well-established that the State suffers an irreparable injury when it is precluded from enforcing its own laws,” Paxton argues. Presented in the context of abortion, there is more than a non-zero chance the Supreme Court will contort itself, if the case reaches it, to permit Texas to engage in this overreach.

What comes next? Certainly, care for transgender kids could be at risk under this same theory. But it wouldn’t stop there. It’s a slippery slope for all kinds of morality-police issues. This one is important not only because abortion rights are important, but also because it signals more to come.

ABC Settles in Trump Defamation Suit

In a surprise Saturday night move, ABC and anchor George Stephanopoulos settled the defamation lawsuit Trump filed against them. They agreed to put $15 million in escrow towards a fund for a future Trump library or foundation and $1 million towards his legal fees in exchange for Trump dismissing the case. The network is also adding a note to the bottom of articles about the allegedly defamatory on air comments the anchor made, that reads, “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J. Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”

This is so far from normal that it is difficult to process. Many people, myself included, viewed the lawsuit as questionable when it was filed and a settlement, especially one this early in the proceedings and of this magnitude, unlikely. It followed a jury’s decision in favor of E. Jean Carroll after she sued Trump for defamation when he claimed she was lying about him sexually assaulting her in a department store decades earlier, Stephanopolous said that Trump had been found civilly liable for raping her.

Stephanopoulos correctly identified the jury’s verdict as a civil one. But Trump objected to the use of the term rape. Legally, the crime of rape used to be limited to contact between a penis and a vagina, and New York law still reads that way, unlike many other states that adopt the more expansive, modern view of what constitutes rape, including digital penetration, which is what Carroll testified to. In New York, that conduct is technically sexual abuse, and the verdict reflected that. The jury rejected a verdict concluding that the defamation centered on a rape claim and based their verdict on sexual abuse, after the Judge explained New York law to them. There would have been no case if Stephanopoulos had used that term, but he characterized it as a rape.

In practice, there is little difference between the two. They are both treated as serious offenses and, in many jurisdictions, consolidated into a rape statute. The Judge noted in an order that “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’ Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

That’s important because to win, Trump would have had to establish at trial both that the statement was false and that it was made with reckless disregard for its truth or falsity, the “actual malice” standard for defamation cases. So why settle the case? And why settle now, before the depositions of both Trump and Stephanopoulos, scheduled for next week, took place? A settlement on the eve of trial is one thing. A settlement before the evidence is even on the table, and one for such a large amount, three times the verdict against Trump in the first of the two Carroll cases, doesn’t make a lot of sense from a strictly legal perspective. That suggests something else is going on here, and it’s deeply concerning if that something is that ABC, a major news organization, has decided to curry favor with the incoming president instead of sticking to its guns.

Court of Appeals Rejects Delay on TikTok Ban

TikTok is used by 170 million Americans. Many younger Americans go to the app for news as well as for entertainment. So when the federal Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia upheld a law passed by Congress that will ban TikTok unless its China-based owner divests, it sent shock waves.

According to CBS, “Thirty-nine percent of small businesses say that access to TikTok is critical to their businesses' existence, while another 39% say TikTok has allowed them to generate supplemental or principal incomes through their activity on the app, according to the report. Sixty-nine percent of small businesses say TikTok has led to increased sales in the past year.”

The law, signed into effect by President Biden, reflects national security concerns about the Chinese government’s access to information. The company argues that it infringes on Americans’ First Amendment rights. They wanted to keep the law from going into effect while they continue to challenge it. But on Friday, the Court of Appeals rejected that request, telling them the schedule had already been expedited and they have plenty of time to get it in front of the Supreme Court before the deadline.

Trump’s position is unclear. He tried to ban TikTok during his first term in office. In March, he told CNBC that “he still believed TikTok posed a national security risk but opposed banning it because doing so would help its rival, Facebook. Now that Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg has been to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring, it’s hard to know where Trump might be.

Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Will Trump’s views change again? Inaugural donors get access and perks. Do some donors expect more? Trump almost surely will leash his Justice Department and take steps to prevent them from inquiring too closely into his conduct, so it will be even more important for the press to be scrupulous about reporting on potential corruption or any allegations of improper influence on official decision-making.

Women Absent from House Leadership

No women will helm House committees when Republicans take over in January. Zero. It’s a development that powerfully conveys the demotion of women to second-class citizens who can’t make decisions about their own bodies, even when their lives are at stake. No leadership roles for you, ladies.

Just from this smattering of the news circulating as we head into the new week, we can see how challenging this is going to be. There is already so much that it’s hard to keep track of it, and Trump isn’t even in office yet. The Trump news is already so omnipresent that it’s exhausting even if you aren’t intentionally paying close attention to it.

Instead of letting it hit us scattershot like this, we need a framework for assessing it. We need to be able to both categorize news—where does it fit in on the spectrum of what sorts of damage Trump is doing to democracy—and grade developments—is this a significant step on a path towards authoritarianism. Categorizing will help us see developments as part of the bigger picture of Trump’s conduct, not just as individual bright, shiny objects. Grading them helps us understand which events are so significant they merit center stage on our radar. And sometimes, the importance of developments only comes into focus when we can view them in the context of larger trends.

That’s what we’ll be doing here on Civil Discourse with The Democracy Index. We’ll figure out how to understand what’s happening and how to process it, while retaining our sanity so we’re in the best position to push back and defend the Republic. It’s going to be a big job, but letting democracy slip away through our fingers isn’t an option. We’ll get there.

I know that was a lot. Thank you for sticking with me.

We’re in this together,

Joyce