From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

 

Clinging to the wreckage

ROGER FITCH ESQ • MONDAY, AUGUST 10, 2020

Trump's fresh rampage ... Taking the USA beyond proto-authoritarianism ... A chaotic post-election scenario ... Cheating might save the day ... Flouting the Supreme Court's rulings ... The odour of corruption ... Reichstag fires and the president's brown shirts ... Absentee voting and the postal system ... Our Man in Washington Roger Fitch reports  

 " ... [W]hat can you say about a person who, before speaking before an adoring crowd, raises his eyes to heaven and calls himself the chosen one? What can you say about an administration where the secretary of state says, 'Perhaps Trump has been sent by the good lord to save Israel from Iran'? The country is being run by madmen ... [but] I don't think it is fascism. It is essentially tin-pot dictatorship." 
Noam Chomsky

 

"Be wary of paramilitaries ... When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come."
Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century 

 

"Throughout his time in office, he [did] everything possible to drive people away ... not a single thing that he has done as president ... would make anyone who voted against him in 2016 want to vote for him in 2020 ... he ha[s] done everything imaginable to animate people who had not voted in 2016 (or who voted for a third party candidate) to turn out and vote for his opponent this year ... Democrats were choosing among ... people who would all surely beat Trump at the polls"
Neil Buchanan 

 

People used to joke about Donald Trump's emotional pathology. Was he, perhaps, a menstruating man? 

Since the president's impeachment, no one's laughing. The senate's failure to convict and remove Trump when they had the chance has clearly emboldened the president, who has been on a fresh rampage of impeachable acts. One legal writer posited what the Spanish call an autogolpe: self-coup.

There is now fear that a bad-faith president, one of low intelligence, supported by dishonest state officials and partisan media, might claim victory while losing; it's happened before, although Donald Trump won't have a first cousin calling the election early, as Fox News' John Ellis did for George Bush in 2000.  

The Pentagon is being urged to complete contingency planning for Trump's expected malefactions; in any case, there will be chaos on election day; post-election "Trump amendments" to the constitution have been proposed. 

Trump's (diminishing) support never quite reached Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism; even so, after Trump, people may well speak of a time when some Americans "flirted" with fascism. The f-word is already in use, as the president ventures beyond proto-authoritarianism and incipient fascism. 

Umberto Eco: listed 14 properties of fascist ideology

Some observers wrongly assume Republicans have a future, let alone a majority, in America: the party in fact is in a demographic death spiral; only cheating can save them. Most of the major cities in the US are Democratic; it is only through diabolical gerrymanders and vote suppression (e.g. Florida's unconstitutional poll tax) that Republicans cling to office.

•   •   •

Aside from Trump's sententious and often false tweets, Americans are increasingly subjected to his executive orders, the incoherent, often-lawless edicts of an erratic leader in his final months of mischief. Such a purported order was used to justify the roll-out of federal heavies in Democratic cities (see below), ostensibly to counter urban crime.

There is an unprecedented crime wave underway: at the top, where Donald Trump is flouting the supreme court's recent decisions on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and transgender rights. 

After losing the supreme court cases on gender equality, in one of which the White House filed briefs opposing the pleadings of the government's own Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Trump pushed ahead with regulations licensing continued discrimination - even against the homeless. 

The president is also fighting subpoenas for his tax returns in New York State's criminal investigation, after losing the supreme court case on that very matter; perhaps he expected New York State to pursue the  hands-off approach to white-collar crime currently offered at the Justice Department.

Stonewalling Cyrus Vance Jr turned out to be a legal blunder: the Manhattan DA's memorandum of law supporting dismissal of Trump's claims revealed that the Trump Organisation was under investigation for bank and insurance fraud. Deutsche Bank - almost the only bank lending money to the serial bankrupt Trump - has already responded to the DA's criminal subpoenas for his financial records. The Post has more. 

Manhattan DA Vance: Trump Organisation under investigation for bank and insurance fraud 

Deutsche Bank is meanwhile investigating questionable transactions between the president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Deutsche employees.

The president's personal pecuniary interests trump everything. The FBI, now on Pennsylvania Avenue, has congressional support to build a new headquarters outside downtown DC, but Trump opposes the move: it would make the Bureau's headquarters across the street from Trump International Hotel available for redevelopment and possible commercial competition. Even Republicans can smell this corruption.

•   •   •

Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, congress explicitly rejected a federal police force in the US, but Donald Trump, aided by his servile (Acting) Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Attorney Gerneral William Barr, is busy using a back door to create one.

Trump established the first beachhead in Portland, Oregon, with heavily armed, unidentified and camouflaged federal agents "stretching the limits of their authority", as the New York Times delicately put it. 

It was a manufactured crisis, quickly seen by some as "made-for-TV fascism" and "performative authoritarianism". 

With electoral doom increasingly likely, Donald Trump has ignited multiple Reichstag Fires (perhaps literally, in the case of the Democratic headquarters in Arizona) in Democratic-governed cities, with Portland the first regional sortie, following his unsuccessful assault on Washington, DC.

Unmarked federal agents in Portland

Chicago and Philadelphia remain particular targets of  Mr Trump. Just as Herr Hitler must have cracked down first on unreliable cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, Mr Trump has in his sights every city and state with elected Democrat leadership. Some Democratic officials are calling him out on "fascist tactics". 

Portland reminded Michael Dorf of Putin's Crimean manoeuvres, while Steve Vladeck pointed out the likely illegality and Neil Buchanan feared Chilean-style desaparecidos. 

After extensive litigation and bad publicity (war-zone surveillance aircraft circulating overhead), the Trump incursion backfired spectacularly, and a withdrawal of federal forces from Portland was negotiated.

•   •   •

How low are the Republicans prepared to go, to steal the 2020 elections? Most states (not Texas) offer "no-excuse" absentee ballots. With absentee voting beginning as soon as September, Republicans are desperate to limit its use; there's even speculation they'd be willing to see the US postal service fail, in order to prevent absentee ballots being timely counted. 

Paxton, Texas AG: no absentee voting on Covid grounds

In Texas, AG Ken Paxton successfully appealed a state judge's decision allowing voters afraid of Covid-19 to use the disability provisions of  the law and vote absentee. Paxton threatened to bring felony charges against groups who promoted such voting.

The irony? Paxton has himself been awaiting trial since 2015 on three counts of felony securities fraud.

He was re-elected for another four years in 2018.

Only in Texas.

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under at Justinian

A gangster in the White House

ROGER FITCH ESQ • WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2020

SCOTUS rules on Electoral College voting ... Sexual identity and civil rights ... Native-American reservations ... Dreamers ... Presidential tax records ... The power of theocrats and churches ... Some helpful rulings, others less so ... Justice Department habitually supporting Trump's personal battles in court ... Curious belief that a mentally unfit president could be reelected ... Maybe it is possible ... Roger Fitch reports from Washington 

The 2019 supreme court term has ended. Here's who won and who lost.

First the good news. 

"Faithless electors" can be punished; the decision was unanimous - dealing with situations where members of the Electoral College seek to defy the will of a state's voters. 

In a Louisiana case, the court ended non-unanimous jury verdicts in state felony trials. Linda Greenhouse was fascinated by the hidden agendas revealed in the individual opinions.

In Bostock, a majority supported a literal reading of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 so as to cover sexual identity and orientation. The conservative Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch joined the court's liberals and wrote the opinion. The Atlantic recounts the fortuitous presence of the word "sex" in American anti-discrimination law.

Bostock will affect overtly discriminatory Health and Human Services regulations recently announced by Trump and under legal attack, but religious zealots hope to use their claims to circumvent the new ruling. Some observers suspect Gorsuch laid landmines in Bostock to further future conservative initiatives.

In Indian Country (as we say) there was the momentous McGirt decision, again featuring Justice Gorsuch, who affirmed the enduring validity of Native-American reservations covering vast areas of eastern Oklahoma.  

In the DACA decision (Trump v NAACP), Chief Justice Roberts joined the court's liberals in finding that the Trump administration's efforts to abolish President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals  failed, not because it couldn't be done, but because of the sloppy way it was attempted. 

Citing respect for precedent, the newly-fluid CJ also joined a liberal majority in June Medical Services v Russo, striking down a Louisiana abortion restriction almost identical to one found unconstitutional by a differently-composed court in 2016. 

And then there were unfortunate cases.

As feared by legal writers, more here, faith-based discrimination triumphed at the supreme court, with the Espinoza decision finally giving theocrats victory. Other religious indulgences granted by the supreme court include Little Sisters of the Poor (the "nuns case") about contraception coverage, and the Biel and Morrissey-Berru "religious functions" cases that widely expand a "ministerial" exception to employment discrimination laws.  

The decision to preference religions came just in time for churches (notably Catholics) to secure "Covid" government loans, even where their financial straits stemmed from ruinous sexual-abuse payouts.

A disturbing suspension of habeas in immigration cases was countenanced in the Thuraissigiam case, damaging the important Boumediene precedent. 

The resolution of Trump's financial subpoena problems was needlessly postponed in Trump v Mazars and Trump v Vance: the controversy continues. 

It's unclear what effect the subpoena cases will have on the McGahn case currently on appeal. That's the astonishing case in which a Republican-dominated panel of the DC court of appeals conveniently ruled that federal courts can't enforce congressional subpoenas against employees of  the executive branch. House Democrats appealed to a full bench who have heard the case but not yet ruled.   

Gorsuch: suspected of laying landmines

In a number of cases this term the Justice Department inappropriately supported Trump personally, e.g, in the subpoena cases. The new term will have (depending on election results) further disreputable Justice interventions, e.g, to find Obamacare unconstitutional, and (building on a 2018 decision) to shield US corporations from liability under the Alien Tort Statute for human rights abuses abroad (more here on DoJ's shameful brief). 

•   •   •

Overseas commentators imbibing American media's "bothsidesism" portray the US as a country gripped in battle between two evenly-matched, morally-equivalent political parties with sincerely-held views, each vying for the voters' support. Even so, according to this doomsday narrative, an insoluble "partisan" deadlock in the US is leading to a "failed state".

Not infrequently, it's assumed - without basis - that Donald Trump, a man who lost the popular vote in 2016 (his polls have rarely risen above the low-40s since), whose psychiatric-based 25th Amendment removal was already under discussion in January 2017, who helped his party lose 48 House seats in 2018 and was actually impeached in 2019, is somehow representative of, and likely to be re-elected by, a majority of Americans, despite the devastating consequences that would bring to their country. 

It's an insulting assertion, blaming the victims rather than the actual architect of America's current dysfunction: the gangster in the White House, the worst-ever leader in US history.

Native fascism has indeed received popular support in America before, but only a cynical belief that crime pays, and Americans are mulishly stupid, explains the notion of an openly-corrupt, mentally-ill conman winning re-election. 

A substantial number of Trump voters have soured on him, and won't vote for him again. At best, his support may approach the highest free-election achievement of another evil demagogue. 

Der Führer retained office by avoiding further free elections; sadly, there are two ways (here and here) that a defeated Trump might also contrive to remain in office.

From Roger Fitch and our Friends Down Under at Justinian

The republic in flames

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, JUNE 16, 2020

Trump has found his Roy Cohn ... The Pussy Grabber waves a bible ... Sacking inspectors general en masse ... Grifters united ... Attempts to politicise the armed services ... Roger Fitch files from Washington 

"He Is Even Dumber Than We Thought" - New Republic headline.

 "As limited as his mental capacity is, he needs no assistance in thinking of ways to grab things that he wants, whether it is vaginas or political power, legal limitations be damned" - Justia.

"Trump is a 'predator' who 'would be in prison' if he hadn't been born rich" - clinical psychiatrist.

 "Trump has reached the 'mad emperor' stage, and it's terrifying to behold" - Guardian headline.

Abetted by Attorney General William Barr (a man compared to Carl Schmitt and Roy Cohn), Donald Trump has long searched for a Reichstag Fire to further his authoritarian agenda (more here), and he thought he'd found one in the George Floyd protests sweeping the US.

It started with his (disputed) discovery that he controlled the District of Columbia National Guard, and might bring in out-of-state National Guards. Immediately, America's infantile president was like a child with a new toy: a new weapon to use, not just against demonstrators, but also the media.

On June first, Trump emerged from his White House bunker. His usual Schutzstaffel augmented with a  mysterious unmarked paramilitary force (either an FBI hostage rescue team or Bureau of Prisons Special Operations Response Team), America's Caudillo strode across Pennsylvania Avenue to St John's Church, followed by his AG, his defence secretary and worst of all, a fatigue-clad (now contrite) head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

St John's precincts had been violently cleared of peaceful demonstrators by the thuggish AG; in the space provided, a photo-op was staged. Having just promised to send in the army, America's godless leader now stood before the church brandishing a bible, a repudiation of separation of church and state as well as  freedom of assembly. 

The Episcopal bishop was outraged, but Trump was unrepentant, having recently claimed the non-existent power to force states to open churches. 

Trump with his Schutzstaffel - on the way to church 

It seemed a simple stunt designed to beat up the president's bestial "base", but Americans were alarmed by a new danger: a politicised military, as quickly recognised by the military itself. An earlier military showdown in Washington (in 1932) ended badly for another Republican president. 

Was this threatened coup the moment the shameless president went too far for the tolerant (race-aside) Americans? His polls sank. Ex-officials and some Republican senators began speaking out. More here.

•   •   •

It should have happened sooner. Behind the theatre, there is nothing innocent about Trump's flagrant deregulatory corruption and criminal mischief. The president is using the pandemic pretext to kill health and environmental regulations, even flout court orders, while ingratiating himself with supporters by funding church salaries, tormenting sexual minorities and reviving barbaric hunting practices.  

Every lever of government has been corruptly co-opted, and even alternative civil institutions of the Republican Party have been subverted: the Federalist Society has become a Trump tool rather than a vehicle for conservative legal sentiment. More here. 

Ransacking the republic has required the removal of inspectors general en masse. These "Stalinist" purges should be a national scandal; their purpose, other than revenge (the Intelligence IG who forwarded the Ukraine extortion whistleblower's account to congress) and punishment, is to forestall any investigations of the president, at least until after the election. 

The first high-level victim was the Office of Personnel Management chief; others followed, including Glenn Fine, the newly-named IG charged with oversight of disbursal of the corona virus appropriations, and the IGs for both Defence (also Glenn Fine) and the State Department. 

It's not just IGs being sacked, witness Rick Bright, an official who declined to recommend the dangerous anti-malarial drug Trump had been spruiking, along with other nostrums peddled by his mates. 

deVos: regulations to protect dodgy "educational" institutions 

For some of Trump's new placemen - who often have conflicts of interest - it's a prize: a mediocre Texas congressman, John Ratcliffe, was awarded Chief of Intelligence for obstructing Trump's impeachment. 

The president also believes in looking after grifters like himself. New regulations cobbled together by his odious Education Secretary Betsy deVos are designed to protect proprietors of unscrupulous "colleges" like Trump University from student actions and remedies. Congress overturned her regulations, but Trump vetoed the disallowance (more deVos skulduggery here).

•   •   •

Some discern a constructive abdication by Trump of his constitutional role as president. Why doesn't he just retire, go back to shady real estate deals, TV shows and personal (as opposed to public) branding? 

Admittedly, if he clings to power four more years, lots of criminal statutes of limitations will run out.

He'd also have more time to settle old scores before he leaves, e.g, bring back unrestrained defamation (unless he's the target), although this could backfire.America: The Smoking Ruin

As it is, he's hurting The Party, and looks like taking the senate down with him.  

Either way, the country will be a smoking ruin when he goes. 

From Roger Fitch and our friend down under at Justinian

The plot thickens

ROGER FITCH ESQ • WEDNESDAY, MAY 20, 2020

SCOTUS tussle over congressional subpoenas for Trump's financial records ... Presidential immunity rejected in Nixon and Clinton cases ... Republicans want a compliant Supreme Court ... Yet, POTUS not doing well in the lower courts ... Attorney General's political manipulation of the judiciary ... Alarms and diversions for the election... Roger Fitch files from Washington  

We sometimes forget that Donald Trump won office with 26.3% of eligible voters (Hillary got 26.5%).

It's still a shock to see a transparently unsuitable person direct the whole US government, even as he rages against it, yet under the peculiar American presidential system of government, he can. As a consequence, a country ravaged by virus is at the same time mismanaged and pillaged by an administration stuffed with party operatives, corporate lobbyists and special interests, staffed with the unqualified and incompetent. 

As for the hyper-litigious and "paranoid" president, his own day of judgment arrived in the supreme court, where his astonishing claims to be above the law were considered in oral arguments conducted by telephone. More here and here. 

Sadly, the court looks set to buy into some of Trump's (bad faith) claims that congress acted in bad faith in issuing subpoenas for financial records held by third parties such as Deutsche Bank and his accountants Mazars. 

The institutions stand ready to obey the subpoenas, but Trump argued that doesn't matter: their compliance with law would "burden" his presidency. 

As Marty Lederman noted, the president produced no evidence of actual burdens. Instead, he relied upon deceptively-described Justice Department memoranda to support his position, just as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin used a DOJ memo to block release of Trump's tax returns to  congress, notwithstanding a statute specifically authorising subpoenas for taxpayer returns.

The president's obvious goal is to keep his financial improprieties secret until at least after the election.

Previous supreme courts unanimously rejected similar claims of presidential privilege and immunity by presidents Nixon and Clinton. Will things be different with an ideologically-packed supreme court? 

If the court allows Trump's arguments to stand, it would signal that a major political party has secured a durable partisan alignment of justices for the benefit of the party's sitting president. 

But the Republicans want more: they want a supreme court dependably aligned with the party itself, as in Wisconsin. 

In 2000, long before the Trump court was in place, a partisan faction of the supreme court installed an unelected president, in Bush v Gore. Experts are debating whether it could happen again this year. 

Neomi Rao: reliable DC Trump judge opposed to release of Mueller grand jury evidence

Many are reflecting on the fact that the supreme court would now have a 5-4 liberal composition, had the Republican senate not stonewalled Obama's nominee Merrick Garland until the Democrat president's term expired. That court might have taken a very different view of Trump's remarkable claims.

The president is losing in the lower courts. A 4th circuit decision allows the foreign emoluments case against Trump to go forward, and the DC circuit has upheld a district court's decision that the secret grand jury evidence from the Mueller inquiry must be disclosed to congress pursuant to a House Judiciary Committee subpoena - reliably dissenting was Neomi Rao; she and Gregory Katsis, another Trump appointee, are already proving their worth to the party. 

In a desperate attempt to suppress the grand jury testimony, the government has asked the supreme court to set aside the DC circuit's decision.

There's still a DC en banc ruling pending in the McGahn case, a review of a three-judge panel's decision in which two Republican judges inexplicably endorsed the amazing view that congress can't enforce any subpoenas against executive branch employees. 

With six months to go, Trump's election-year strategy has emerged: discredit the Mueller inquiry, and partly supported by his attorney general, create external scandals: the absurd, Trumped-up "Obamagate". 

Barr: unstitching the Mueller convictions

In federal district courts, AG Bill Barr has been systematically sabotaging cases arising from the special counsel's report, while his dishonest response to an FOI case requesting the full report prompted DC judge Reggie Walton to rebuke the AG and question his candour. 

In the Roger Stone case, the Attorney General's flagrant meddling was successfully resisted by DC judge Amy Jackson Berman. Stone has been sentenced, though temporarily reprieved due to the corona crisis.

Barr interfered next in the trial of former national security director Michael Flynn, also indicted during the Mueller investigation. After installing outside counsel to review the case, Barr pushed out career prosecutors and filed for dismissal of the case, even though the retired general had already pleaded guilty - twice.

The Flynn judge, Emmet Sullivan, could reject the government's motion, and Barr, perhaps unwisely, has sneered at his critics, who call his submissions faulty, and likely to incite frivolous arguments in future criminal cases. 

Judge Sullivan has now appointed outside counsel to argue the case against dismissal. More here. 

The Attorney General's political manipulation of the courts has shocked lawyers, and over 2000 former DOJ officers have called for Barr's dismissal. 

Progressive organisations discern a Republican plot, now reaching fruition, to use the courts to undo most 20th century advances in federal and state legislation (report here).

From Roger Fitch and our friends down under.

The war-time president

ROGER FITCH ESQ • TUESDAY, APRIL 7, 2020

Managing the pandemic in the US of A ... Letting the virus out of the bottle as the president bloviates and botches ... Ideology trumps science ... Misinterpreting the Defence Procurement Act ... Disbanding and closing programs for pandemic preparedness ... US manufacturers busily exporting vital equipment ... Oversight provisions in rescue legislation to be ignored ... Roger Fitch's Letter from Washington 

 

"I didn't know people die from the flu."

Donald Trump, unaware that Frederick Trump, his enterprising immigrant grandfather, died in the 1918 flu pandemic.

*   *   *

"We've had a big problem with the ... woman governor ... from Michigan. We don't like to see the complaints ... Now, she wants a declaration of emergency, and, you know, we'll have to make a decision on that ... [but] all she does is ... blame the federal government."

Donald Trump, bullying a blue state governor through threats to withhold coronavirus aid.

*   *   *

"They had things [in the Democrats' proposed legislation], levels of voting that if you'd ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again." 

Donald Trump, conceding that improved access to voting during the pandemic would cost his party office.  

*   *   *

Character is destiny, and America's kakistocrat president is dealing with the coronavirus crisis as only he would. The Post has an overview of Trump's shocking, dysfunctional response.

Mr Trump seized on the crisis, not to save lives, but to preen and bloviate about himself, and punish Democrats, too. For example, presidential declarations of a local state of emergency trigger federal financial support and assistance, and Trump has mostly green-lighted these for Republican states, while delaying them for Democrat-governed states. More here and here.

The government knew about the virus on January 3rd, had a CDC pandemic playbook to deal with it, yet outrageously Trump played down the danger, for over six weeks.

Soon after taking office, the Trump administration was warned by the Pentagon of an imminent epidemic danger; even so, the Trump administration closed down pandemic modelling by DHS in 2017. In 2018, the national security adviser John Bolton disbanded the White House pandemic office. 

In late 2018, Trump's administration received detailed plans, ordered by the Obama administration, for a new machine designed to produce millions of respirator masks quickly during a pandemic. The plans were discarded and the project abandoned. 

In 2019, the Trump administration failed to require the speedy delivery of low cost ventilators, developed by the Dutch multinational Philips under a contract funded by the Obama administration. Instead, the FDA approved the immediate sale of commercial versions, but gave Philips until September 2022 to supply the US. 

Philips stuck to its contract, absent the government's use of the Defence Procurement Act (see below), and its version of the government-funded ventilators is now being sold at an enormous mark-up around the world, with no priority granted to the US.

Other blunders: a 2019 pandemic exercise code-named "Crimson Contagion", simulated by the Trump administration's own Department of Health and Human Services, produced an alarming report on which no action was taken. Also, early intelligence reports on the government's frightening unpreparedness for a pandemic were ignored, despite Democrat pleas to act.

The president even toyed with letting the epidemic run its course, for the greater capitalist good, while some Republican senators with advance knowledge of the catastrophe sold off their endangered shares, buying into companies likely to profit from the crisis. More here and here.

Initially, Trump wrongly characterised his emergency powers under the DPA as "nationalisation", apparently to avoid civilian use of the Act; in fact, his administration has used the Act extensively for peacetime military procurement, including equipment for natural disasters.

Eventually, the president accepted crisis legislation that included a $500 billion discretionary fund that some feared was just another bailout for needy corporations, and, relaxing his ideological objections, allowed use of the DPA to procure ventilators from General Motors and others (including Philips) that he previously found too costly. 

While Trump dithered, US manufacturers exported critical equipment to buyers overseas. 

When crisis legislation was passed, it needed provisions to restrain Trump and other government insiders from profiting, and specified behaviour Trump was forbidden to engage in, e.g, diverting money to his Mexican wall. Still, there will be benefits for Trump, and in any case, he intends to ignore oversight provisions in the legislation (the House of Reps won't). 

In sum, President Trump, refusing any responsibility, has completely stuffed-up the virus response. 

Chances are, he'll get away with it. 

Just think. If the senate had done its job - removed the corrupt, incompetent Donald Trump from office - and afterwards, US marshals had succeeded in extracting him from his White House retreat, then the (comparatively) harmless Michael Pence would now be president, saving perhaps a few hundred thousand lives. 

With that in mind, an Intercept writer penned an open letter to Pence, encouraging him to move things along with the 25th amendment.