Let the Investigations Begin! | The Nation

There are a lot of individuals, communities, and, yes, special interests that had a hand in the Democrats’ taking control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections. All of those people will now expect their particular issue to be championed by the upcoming Congress. Democrats will be expected to do all the things.

I also have my pet issues and priorities, but I am here to be reasonable. I do not expect Democrats to center the thing that is most important to me. I don’t expect them to lead with it. I don’t expect Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer to spend a lot of time on CNN talking about it. What I do expect is a constant, rolling drumbeat of subpoenas, investigations, and indictments. Give everybody else their requested legislation. Force Donald Trump to use his veto pen so often that his tiny hands start to cramp up. That’s what everybody wants. But for me, just give me… justice. Give me accountability.

Jeffries has already said that the Democrats will not be out for “revenge.” He’s said that they are not interested in “retribution.” Some have interpreted these statements as an indication that the Democrats in Congress will not try to hold the Trump administration accountable for what it’s done.

I have a more charitable read on Jeffries’s statements, which is that “revenge” and “retribution” are different from accountability. I think “revenge” and “retribution” are indeed wrong. We have lived through that, and it sucks. I don’t want to see the Democratic version of Trump’s prosecutorial persecution of Hunter Biden or James Comey or John Bolton or (wait, I’m not done) Leititia James or Jack Smith or Ilhan Omar. The Trump administration investigates people because they dared to dissent. He uses the law to bully his enemies and intimidate others into silence. I don’t want the Democrats to engage in any bit of that.

What I want is for the Democrats to investigate criminal acts—from the ones that have taken place in plain sight to the ones where the criminals think they’ve gotten away with it because Trump approves of their crimes. I don’t want Jared Kushner to be investigated because he’s the president’s son-in-law. I want him investigated because he’s potentially laundered and embezzled $2 billion dollars in funds from the governments of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I don’t want Stephen Miller investigated because he’s a racist ghoul who’s at the center of the Trump brain trust. I want him investigated because he’s a racist ghoul who has violated the due-process rights of millions of people and, potentially, directly violated court orders. I don’t want Pete Hegseth investigated because he’s a toxic psychopath who is unqualified to lead America’s military forces. I want him investigated because he’s a fucking murderer who needs to spend the rest of his life in jail, either in this country or The Hague.

If Trump pardons all of these cronies, I want there to be enough public evidence available that these people can’t take a Carnival freaking Cruise without being scooped up by Interpol.

And don’t even get me started on the Epstein files. I’m finna sound like Marjorie Taylor Greene when it comes to the Epstein files.

It doesn’t have to be what the Democrats lead with. It doesn’t have to be what the Democrats tout as they’re trying to show the people they are delivering on what they voted for. It just has to be something the Democrats do. Wake up, issue a subpoena, release information on who is a pedophile, then get in front of the cameras and talk about gas or eggs or Iran or whatever. They can talk about whatever the hell they want to, as long as the subpoenas and indictments keep rolling in.

The incoming head of the House Oversight Committee (which will have the authority to conduct most of the investigations I wish for) is likely to be California Democrat Robert Garcia. On election night, after they called the House for the Democrats, I was on a show and about to launch into a polemic about how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should really get that position instead of Garcia. But then Garcia issued a two-word statement: “Lawyer Up.” I swallowed my AOC rosary (for the briefest of moments) and said to a friend (off-camera, of course), “Sheet, negro, that’s all you had to say.”

The Bad and the Ugly Bold and the Beautiful

• In Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola holds a slight lead over Republican Dan S. Sullivan in the race for the Senate. We’re still waiting for the cross-country skiers to deliver more ballots to be counted, but it seems that most of the outstanding ones are early or absentee ballots. Peltola has been overperforming with people who voted by mail or placed their votes in a barrel attached to a Saint Bernard.
• In Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom remains ahead of incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith by roughly 1,800 votes. The race will likely come down to around 15,000 provisional ballots, which are cast by people when their eligibility is in some type of question, and a smattering of ballots that were mailed on time but arrived after Election Day. What I find interesting here (I mean, beyond “HOLY SHIT MISSISSIPPI IS IN PLAY”), is that Republicans are ideologically committed to throwing away any ballot they can. Mississippi Republicans literally took a case all the way to the Supreme Court specifically asking to throw away ballots that arrive by mail after Election Day. But if Hyde-Smith is losing (and she is losing right now), she’ll likely want those provisional ballots and late-arriving ballots to count if she’s going to have any chance of closing the gap. So, you know, expect a lot of rank hypocrisy from Republicans from the Delta.
• In Kansas, where 98 percent of the precincts have been counted, Democrat Cindy Holscher leads Republican Ty Masterson by about 7,000 votes in the state’s gubernatorial race. Holscher has declared victory, but when the margin is within 1 percent (which it appears to be), Kansas law calls for an automatic “close audit” of 10 percent of the precincts, which means 10 percent of the vote will be recounted by hand to look for any discrepancies. Masterson also has the right to demand a recount if the margin remains this close.
• In Los Angeles, democratic socialist Nithya Raman has defeated Democrat Karen Bass in a close-as-nails run-off between the top two vote-getters from the city’s open primary in June. That means DSA-backed candidates now run NYC and LA. It also means a person who has been critical of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza will be the mayor that hosts the world at the 2028 Summer Olympics. What a time to be alive.

Inspired Takes Bitter Assholes

• Maine Senator Susan Collins lashed out at Trump as well as at voters after her defeat on Tuesday, claiming that her efforts to break from the president were “never enough” to satisfy voters and that they were more impressed by rhetoric than results. She sounds… concerned. Perhaps even… disappointed. Hopefully, Susan Collins has finally learned her lesson.
• Vice President JD Vance blamed the Republicans’ loss on the Iran War and other factors that lead directly back to his boss. Trump said that Vance’s analysis was “fine.” Friends, when Trump shrugs off a direct attack from one of his underlings as “fine,” consider it your first indication that the dear leader is running out of Kool-Aid.
• After doubling down on her endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers even after he lost to Abdul El-Sayed, Haley Stevens said that she hoped the Democratic Party would be “big enough for more than one viewpoint”—which is a wild thing to say given that she, not El-Sayed, abandoned her party’s nominee because he didn’t share her viewpoint. Stevens then canceled a scheduled appearance at George Washington University on Thursday, where she was supposed to join Representative Jamie Raskin for post-election analysis. I’m looking forward to Stevens’s future career as discount Tulsi Gabbard, but I hope she doesn’t get too comfortable in her pariah chair, because she’s gonna have to make space for John Fetterman very, very soon.

Worst Argument of the Week

I was going to skip this section this week because, I mean, WE WON IN TEXAS, Y’ALL. But SCOTUSblog editor Sarah Isgur decided to unleash a take so bad I had to put down my peace pipe and pull out my keyboard.

It involves Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. Before the election, Alito said he would not retire during the lame-duck Congress, even if Republicans lost control of the Senate. After the election, Alito reiterated his pledge. This means that Alito likely cannot retire at all during the next and last two years of the Trump presidency, because Democrats now have the strength to block his replacement from being confirmed (and Democrats will block another Trump appointment to the Supreme Court or, so help me God, I will start shooting myself up with gamma radiation until I turn green).

But Isgur sees another way out. She wrote on the apartheid social media app: “Alito won’t retire in the lame duck and he doesn’t need to. Trump can nominate someone to the Supreme Court and the senate can confirm without a vacancy. Then Trump can wait to sign the commission any time in the next two years. The question isn’t Alito, its [sic] Cornyn/Tillis/Thune.”

What she’s saying is that Trump can nominate Alito’s replacement now, before the new term, and have him confirmed by the Senate now, by the lame-duck Senate—and then hold that appointment in waiting for up to two years, until Alito decides to actually vacate his position.

This is wrong. It’s completely wrong. There’s no constitutional mechanism to nominate a person for a vacancy that does not exist. It’d be like a president nominating someone to a position that has not yet been created: “I think we should have a department of puppies, and, if we ever do, I nominate Snoopy to lead it, because he’s a very good boy.” That’s not a nomination; it’s a pointless mouth-noise, and no one is bound to respect it. There’s nothing for the Senate to confirm if the position or vacancy doesn’t exist.

As usual, when it comes to Republicans, the concept that seems to flummox them is consent: who is authorized to give consent, for what purpose the consent is given, and how long the consent lasts. The Senate has the power to “advise and consent” on presidential appointments, and that consent should lapse at the end of the Senate’s term, should the president not fill the vacancy. Starting on January 3, 2027, we have a new Senate. Any consent given by the old one is moot if there are vacancies that haven’t been filled by then. Trump cannot hold the consent of the old Senate in his pocket for two years. He could, at most, hold it for two more months before the new Senate convenes in January.

Isgur is not the first person to have this wild and stupid thought. It’s long been understood that the idea of a “vacancy” on the court is a little loose—the exact temporal moment a “vacancy” comes into being can be open for interpretation—and could be manipulated by bad-faith actors (like Isgur or Trump) to play all sorts of games with the appointments process. Hell, the seminal Supreme Court case, Marbury v. Madison in 1803, essentially arose because both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were playing a game of dick-measuring with the Appointments Clause.

But the reason nobody has really tried to exploit this existential conundrum is that it fairly quickly leads to total system failure and mutually assured destruction. If presidents, along with a sympathetic Senate, can make replacement appointments in perpetuity, even when no actual vacancy exists, then there’s no reason for them not to do it for every judge and commissioner in the entire federal system. But if an outgoing president did that, there would be no reason for an incoming president to honor any of those appointments (again, see Marbury v. Madison, where Adams tried to make a bunch of lame-duck appointments and Jefferson told those people to go jump into the nearest lake). And you pretty quickly end up with President Jon Ossoff ordering the National Guard to remove “Justice” Jeanine Pirro from the office she’s squatting on First Street.

Hmm… come to think of it, I’m not totally opposed to that scenario. Go ahead and listen to Sarah Isgur, Trump, and ensure that Democrats pack the court so hard in 2029 that it will be unconstitutional to so much as look at a gun without a favorable FBI psychological profile. [Obi Wan-Kenobi voice]: “If you strike me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

What I Wrote

For two years, we were told that Democrats could not win unless we supported the worst kinds of policies. We were told to sacrifice trans kids. We were told to deport our neighbors. We were told to embrace toxic masculinity. We were told if we did not do these things, we would never win an election outside of New York, San Francisco, and Chicago.

The people who told us this were wrong. I wrote about why.

In News Unrelated to the Current Chaos

In 2020, Elon Musk moved from California to Texas.

In 2021, Musk relocated Tesla’s headquarters to Texas.

In 2024, Musk relocated the headquarters of SpaceX and Twitter to Texas.

Musk made all of these moves to escape regulators in California as well as an ongoing workplace-discrimination lawsuit regarding rampant alleged racism at Tesla.

In 2027, Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter will fall under the jurisdiction of Texas’s new Democratic governor, Gina Hinojosa, and new Democratic attorney general, Nathan Johnson.

Life comes at you fast.

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