The ethical implications of President-elect Trump's call with Justice Alito; NPR, January 9, 2025

Michel Martin, NPR; The ethical implications of President-elect Trump's call with Justice Alito

"Alito and Trump spoke Tuesday, a day before the president-elect urged the Supreme Court to halt his Jan. 10 sentencing in the New York hush-money case, the justice said in a statement from the court. They did not discuss the case, however, Alito said.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: 

Donald Trump spoke with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on Tuesday, just hours before the president-elect asked the top court to block his sentencing over his New York hush money case. Alito said in a statement that the two of them did not discuss the case or any others involving Mr. Trump or potentially involving him. Gabe Roth joined me earlier to talk about this development, which was first reported by ABC News. Mr. Roth founded Fix the Court. His group advocates for ways to make the federal courts more open and accountable to the public. Good morning. Thanks for joining us.

GABE ROTH: Good morning.

MARTIN: So let me give a picture of the call, as we understand it. Justice Alito said in a statement that one of his former law clerks asked him to take a call from Mr. Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position, in essence, to give him a job reference. What do you make of it?

ROTH: I mean, well, it's obviously an unmistakable breach of protocol. You have an individual and the president-elect, who is petitioning the Supreme Court related to his sentencing in the hush money case, a Supreme Court justice, who, frankly, should know better. This conversation should not have taken place. And someone like Will Levi, the man in question who's looking for a credential, he has plenty of other credentials. He worked for Mike Lee. He could have Mike Lee call. He could - he's worked - he's been a partner in the law. His dad's a former federal judge. His grandfather was the attorney general. So, you know, it doesn't make sense from his perspective, and it's just - this episode shows the justices don't really care about the ethics because they know that no one's going to stop them from doing whatever it is that they want to do.

MARTIN: Have any ethical rules or laws been broken here, to your knowledge?

ROTH: Laws - I don't see any laws having been broken, but, you know, there are certain protocols that if you are a Supreme Court justice, you really don't intermingle with the executive branch or the incoming executive branch. I mean, maybe you attend the State of the Union speech that happens every year, though Justice Alito famously stopped attending that. But generally, the two branches don't intermingle - and especially at a time when President Trump, we know, is going to have all these executive orders coming down the pike whose fate will be decided by the justices. This, to me, just seems like an opportunity for him to have an audience before one of the nine people determining his and his administration's fate in so many of these issues...

It's all self-enforcing and self-policing. So that is really, you know, sort of what the challenge is for people like me and other people who care about the ethics of our highest court is - how do you get the justices to act in a way that is sort of consistent with what most people would believe are their ethical responsibilities?"

Alito Spoke With Trump Shortly Before Supreme Court Filing; The New York Times, January 8, 2025

Adam Liptak, The New York Times ; Alito Spoke With Trump Shortly Before Supreme Court Filing

"Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. spoke with President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday, not long before Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to delay his sentencing following his conviction in New York in a case arising from hush money payments.

Justice Alito said the call was a routine job reference for a former law clerk whom Mr. Trump was considering for a government position.

It was not clear, however, why Mr. Trump would make a call to check references, a task generally left to lower-level aides.

Gabe Roth, the executive director of Fix the Court, an advocacy group that seeks more openness at the Supreme Court, said the call was deeply problematic given the ethics controversies swirling around the court in general and Justice Alito in particular."

David Frum Accuses MSNBC Of Giving Into Fear Of Trump After Mika Brzezinski Apologizes On-Air For His Comment; Mediate, December 4, 2024

Alex Griffing , Mediate; David Frum Accuses MSNBC Of Giving Into Fear Of Trump After Mika Brzezinski Apologizes On-Air For His Comment

[Kip Currier: Mika Brzezinski's on-air apology yesterday is what self-censorship looks and sounds like.

Since last month's election of Donald Trump, MSNBC's Morning Joe program has been periodically engaging in what Yale University authoritarianism expert Dr. Timothy Snyder calls "anticipatory obedience", due to fear of potential retribution from an incoming Trump administration.

When media personalities like Brzezinski kowtow to perceived risks of reporting and engaging in constitutionally-protected free speech, we the public are well-advised to be skeptical of their integrity and commitment to showing and telling the truth. Brzezinski's servile appeasement is more about saving her own skin than having skin in the game of speaking truth to power.

Look for free and independent presses and journalists who don't surrender to fear to curry favor.]

[Excerpt]

"Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, apologized on-air Wednesday for David Frum making a comment that “was a little too flippant” about Fox News earlier in the show. Frum then took to The Atlantic and accused MSNBC of capitulating to the fear felt in the media of President-elect Donald Trump’s promised retribution.

Frum’s article later elicited a response from MSNBC...

Frum’s article on the incident was titled, “The Sound of Fear on Air,” and ran with the subhead, “It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt it had to apologize for something I said.”

MSNBC comms exec Richard Hudock responded to Frum in a statement, saying, “Joe and Mika have consistently expressed their strong reservations and perspectives regarding Pete Hegseth’s nomination from the very beginning, and that stance remains unchanged. We would have responded in the same manner regardless of when these comments were made or what news organization was referenced.” Hudock also invited Frum back to discuss the topic on-air tomorrow.

In the piece, he recapped what had happened and commented on the current environment MSNBC finds itself in as viewers continue to tune out following Trump’s win...

“I do not write to scold anyone; I write because fear is infectious. Let it spread, and it will paralyze us all. The only antidote is courage. And that’s infectious, too,” he concluded.
Watch the clips above via MSNBC."

The Sound of Fear on Air: It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt it had to apologize for something I said.; The Atlantic, December 4, 2024

David Frum, The Atlantic; The Sound of Fear on Air: It is an ominous sign that Morning Joe felt it had to apologize for something I said.

"This morning, I had an unsettling experience."

Trump transition team ethics pledge appears to exclude president-elect; CNN, November 27, 2024

 Betsy Klein, Steve Contorno and Arlette Saenz , CNN; Trump transition team ethics pledge appears to exclude president-elect

[Kip Currier: Res Ipsa Loquitur (The thing speaks for itself)]

[Excerpt]

"President-elect Donald Trump’s team submitted an ethics plan guiding the conduct of its members throughout the transition period that does not appear to include provisions for one key member of the team: the president himself.

“There does not appear to be a provision addressing the requirement for the president-elect to address his conflicts of interest,” said Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Center for Presidential Transition at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Partnership for Public Service."

From Bannon to Musk: The decade that made misinformation the new normal; EL PAÍS, November 25, 2024

 JAVIER SALAS, EL PAÍS ; From Bannon to Musk: The decade that made misinformation the new normal

"The key insight came from researcher Kate Starbird of the University of Washington, who explained: “Misinformation is not a piece of content. It is a strategy.”"

Trump’s education pick once incorrectly claimed to have education degree; The Washington Post, November 20, 2024

Beth Reinhard

, 

Aaron Schaffer

 and 

Laura Meckler

, The Washington Post; Trump’s education pick once incorrectly claimed to have education degree

"Linda McMahon, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice as education secretary, incorrectly claimed in 2009 that she had a bachelor’s degree in education on a questionnaire for a Connecticut Board of Education post, according to news reports at the time.

McMahon received a bachelor’s degree in French and a teaching certificate from East Carolina University, according to her alma mater’s announcement that she would deliver the 2018 commencement speech.

The error on the questionnaire was reported by the Hartford Courant during her unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2010. She said at the time that she mistakenly thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student teaching, and that she had written to the governor’s office the previous year to correct the error after another newspaper noticed the mistake.

McMahon resigned from the state education board one day after the Courant told her it intended to write about the error, the paper reported, but McMahon said the timing was unrelated. The state education board could not immediately fulfill a request to provide a copy of the questionnaire and other correspondence Wednesday morning, but the Trump transition team did not dispute that the error occurred."

How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world; The Guardian, November 17, 2024

Carole Cadwalladr, The Guardian ; How to survive the broligarchy: 20 lessons for the post-truth world

"In the wake of Trump’s unnerving appointees, the investigative journalist and veteran of the libel court offers pointers on coping in an age of surveillance"

Is this (finally) the end for X? Delicate Musk-Trump relationship and growing rivals spell trouble for platform; The Guardian, November 17, 2024

Siân Boyle , The Guardian; Is this (finally) the end for X? Delicate Musk-Trump relationship and growing rivals spell trouble for platform

"As recently as 2022, Musk tweeted that “for Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” He tweeted that “Trump would be 82 at end of his term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.”

Months later, when Musk bought Twitter for $44bn, he fired content moderators and charged for account verification, which meant people could buy influence. Twitter was rebranded to X, shed millions of users and reinstated Trumps’s account, suspended after the White House insurrection in January 2021.

The proliferation on X of alt-right diatribe, hate speech and bots, as well as Musk’s own clash with the UK government during the riots in August, have led to mounting disquiet among X users. The Guardian and Observer announced last week that their presence on the site was now untenable and they would no longer post. Stephen King, the author, left, saying it had become “too toxic”. Oscar-winners Barbra Streisand and Jamie Lee Curtis have departed the platform.

“X has become effectively Truth Social premium,” said Mark Carrigan, author of Social Media for Academics, referring to Trump’s hard-right social media platform. And the talk in technology circles is that Trump’s Truth Social could be folded into X.

If that happens, whose interests take priority? Would Musk suppress criticism of the authoritarian governments he does business with, or promote it? In the Donald and Elon media show, who is the puppet or paymaster?

“If that happens, it will be the ultimate amplification machine for Trump’s ideas – a political super-app masquerading as social media,” said James Kirkham of Iconic, which advises brands including Uber and EA Sports on digital strategies. “Forget Facebook or Fox News; the true heart of the GOP’s digital strategy could be X.”"

Senate confirms Biden’s ethics czar, who will remain under Trump; Government Executive, November 14, 2024

 Eric Katz, Government Executive; Senate confirms Biden’s ethics czar, who will remain under Trump

"The Senate on Thursday confirmed President Biden’s nominee to serve as head of the Office of Government Ethics in a 50-46 vote, giving him a term that will last through President-elect Trump’s tenure. 

David Huitema, currently a State Department ethics official, will now serve in the governmentwide ethics czar role in a five-year term. Senate Democrats sought to prioritize his confirmation in the waning days of the Biden administration and their control of the chamber before Trump’s inauguration, as the former and future president once again brings with him to the Oval Office a bevy of potential conflicts of interest. 

Bringing Huitema’s role more into the foreground is Trump’s decision to so far refuse to sign agreements with the Biden administration, and the ethics agreements that go with them, that enable a formal presidential transition to take place. Absent those agreements, Trump’s teams have been unable to deploy into agencies and receive briefings from career staff. 

OGE has been without a confirmed director for more than a year, when Trump-appointee Emory Rounds’ term expired. Shelley Finlayson, chief of staff and program counsel at the ethics agency, has filled in on an acting basis. During his first term, Trump bypassed Finlayson in a period without a confirmed director to instead install another career official as acting director."

First came the bots, then came the bosses - we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation; The Guardian, November 11, 2024

 Joan Donovan, The Guardian; First came the bots, then came the bosses - we’re entering Musk and Zuck’s new era of disinformation

"In 2024, lies travel further and faster across social media, which is now a battleground for narrative dominance. And now, the owners of the platforms circulating the most incendiary lies have direct access to the Oval Office."

Are Trump voters morally responsible for the harms that will follow from his policies?; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, November 10, 2024

Jessica Wolfendale , Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Are Trump voters morally responsible for the harms that will follow from his policies?

"The nearly 73 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump cannot claim ignorance of Trump’s racism, misogyny and his endorsement of white supremacy and white supremacist terrorism. In the lead up to the 2024 US election, Trump falsely claimed that large numbers of unlawful immigrants were being allowed to entered the country to vote, repeating the ideas of the “white replacement” theory, which claims that “legacy [white] Americans” are being replaced “more obedient people from faraway countries," in the words of right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson. 

Trump has also made no secret of his views about women and about LGBTQ+ people. Indeed, the Trump campaign made anti-trans ads the biggest focal point of its spending. As laid out in Project 2025 — the policy blueprint created by former Trump officials — there is little doubt that Trump’s presidency will seriously erode the basic rights of LGBTQ+ people, women and immigrants, in addition to seriously threatening progress on climate change.

So, are Trump voters racist and misogynist because they voted for a candidate who espouses racist and misogynist views? And do they bear some responsibility for the outcomes of a Trump presidency?

Individual moral responsibility for collective actions

Voting is a collective act. This means that, in most elections, a single person’s vote makes little difference to the outcome. For example, the likelihood that one person’s vote will be “decisive in a presidential election” is about one is 60 million. So, each Trump voter could say, correctly, that their vote made no difference the outcome of the election, and hence they are not responsible for the policies that Trump enacts and the serious harm that those policies are likely to cause thousands, perhaps millions, of people.

The problem with this view is that a person’s moral responsibility is not just based on the causal relationship between their actions and a bad outcome. In my work on war crimes and responsibility, I argue that sometimes a person can be blamed for participating in a harmful collective act even if their participation didn’t make a difference to the outcome. Other scholars agree: the idea of complicity is one way of capturing this intuition. Sometimes a person is blameworthy for simply being part of a wrongful plan, even if it doesn’t go ahead, because they were willing for it to go ahead.

Similarly, it makes intuitive sense to say that all members of the KKK bear some responsibility for the terrorism and violence inflicted by that organisation, even if not every member participated directly in the violence. Put another way, the victims of KKK violence would be justified in blaming all members of the KKK, and not only directly involved in an attack, because all members were willing to allow Black people and their supporters to be harmed and killed. By joining the KKK, these members communicated morally abhorrent attitudes towards the potential victims of KKK actions that make it appropriate for the victims to blame them.

This doesn’t mean that everyone involved in a harmful collective action is equally responsible — those who contribute more bear greater responsibility for that outcome. But that doesn’t mean that a person can simply evade responsibility for the harms caused by a collective act they are part of by claiming that their participation didn’t make any difference to the outcome. Participation is moral communication, and it makes a moral difference to our responsibility. 

What does this mean for the question of voting and moral responsibility?"

"Consequences are severe": Trump's lack of ethics pledge delays transition process; Salon, November 9, 2024

Griffin Eckstein , Salon; "Consequences are severe": Trump's lack of ethics pledge delays transition process

"The specific disclosures required of Trump by the October deadline were created in the wake of his first term. A 2019 amendment to the act created the requirement after Trump sparked bipartisan outrage by failing to mitigate conflicts during his presidency. Both President Joe Biden and Harris had filed the required plans by the deadline. Biden is barred from providing Trump with necessary clearances to sit in on certain briefings until Trump has fulfilled these requirements.

Still, Trump is slated to meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday, a routine part of the transition process that Trump did not afford Biden four years ago."

“This is a bad dream:” Kamala Harris voters baffled by Trump’s win come to terms; The Mercury News, November 6, 2024

JULIA PRODIS SULEK , The Mercury News; “This is a bad dream:” Kamala Harris voters baffled by Trump’s win come to terms

"Harris’s supporters tried to make sense of the news that more than half the country voted for a convicted felon who inspired a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol after he refused to admit he lost the 2020 election, someone who was found liable for sexual abuse, and promised to seek revenge on his enemies — not to mention using vile language to describe the vice president and other antics...

The campaigns exposed deep divides between the candidates and polarized the nation.

“No matter who won this election, it’s clear that we’ve become two separate Americas, and neither America understands the other one or has much of an interest in understanding the other one,” said political analyst and USC professor Dan Schnur.

“That leaves California in the exact same place that conservatives in Texas and Florida were in four years ago. You either dig in and get even angrier and fight back even harder, or you try to understand why there’s people on the other side who don’t agree with you.”"

A peaceful but determined resistance to Trump must start now; The Guardian, November 6, 2024

Robert Reich , The Guardian; A peaceful but determined resistance to Trump must start now

"Countless people are now endangered on a scale and intensity almost unheard of in modern America.

Our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way.

We will do that by resisting Trump’s attempts to suppress women’s freedoms. We will fight for the rights of women and girls to determine when and whether they have children. No one will force a woman to give birth.

We will block Trump’s cruel efforts at mass deportation. We will fight to give sanctuary to productive, law-abiding members of our communities, including young people who arrived here as babies or children.We will not allow mass arrests and mass detention of anyone in America. We will not permit families to be separated. We will not allow the military to be used to intimidate and subjugate anyone in this country.

We will protect trans people and everyone else who is scapegoated because of how they look or what they believe. No one should have to be ashamed of who they are.

We will stop Trump’s efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies. A free nation protects political dissent. A democracy needs people willing to stand up to tyranny.

How will we conduct this resistance?

By organizing our communities. By fighting through the courts. By arguing our cause through the media.

We will ask other Americans to join us – left and right, progressive and conservative, white people and people of color. It will be the largest and most powerful resistance since the American revolution.

But it will be peaceful. We will not succumb to violence, which would only give Trump and his regime an excuse to use organized violence against us.

We will keep alive the flames of freedom and the common good, and we will preserve our democracy. We will fight for the same things Americans have fought for since the founding of our nation – rights enshrined in the constitution and Bill of Rights."

Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code; The New York Times, November 9, 2024

 Ken Bensinger, The New York Times; Trump Holds Up Transition Process Over Ethics Code

[Kip Currier: Incipit (It begins)...]

"President-elect Donald J. Trump has not yet submitted a legally required ethics pledge stating that he will avoid conflicts of interest and other ethical concerns while in office, raising concerns that his refusal to do so will hamper the smooth transition to power.

Mr. Trump’s transition team was required to submit the ethics plan by Oct. 1, according to the Presidential Transition Act.

While the transition team’s leadership has privately drafted an ethics code and a conflict-of-interest statement governing its staff, those documents do not include language, required under the law, that explains how Mr. Trump himself will address conflicts of interest during his presidency.

Since Mr. Trump created his transition team in August, it has refused to participate in the normal handoff process, which typically begins months before the election.

It has missed multiple deadlines for signing required agreements governing the process. That has prevented Mr. Trump’s transition team from participating in national security briefings or gaining access to federal agencies to begin the complicated work of preparing to take control of the government on Jan. 20, 2025."

A ‘republic if we can keep it.’ Perhaps we cannot.; The Washington Post, November 6, 2024

Jennifer Rubin , The Washington Post; A ‘republic if we can keep it.’ Perhaps we cannot.

"In sum, when a country deliberately rejects decency, truth, democratic values and good governance, the problem is not a candidate, a party, the media or a feckless attorney general. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires a virtuous people devoted to democratic ideals. Whether we can recover the habits of mind — what we used to call civic virtue — will be the challenge of the next four years and beyond."

Kamala Harris concedes with dignity and grace; The Washington Post, November 6, 2024

 Editorial Board, The Washington Post; Kamala Harris concedes with dignity and grace

"Most important, she promised to assist in a peaceful transition of power.

This last promise is the hallmark of a democrat. That Ms. Harris offered it so convincingly was a refreshing contrast to 2020, when Mr. Trump prematurely declared victory, twisted arms of federal and state legislators to reverse his loss, and then incited a mob to riot at the Capitol as Congress counted the electoral votes."

Read Vice President Kamala Harris’ Full Concession Speech; Time, November 6, 2024

TIME STAFF, Time; Read Vice President Kamala Harris’ Full Concession Speech

[Excerpt]

 "You have the capacity to do extraordinary good in the world. And so to everyone who is watching, do not despair. This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize, and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together. Look, many of you know I started out as a prosecutor and throughout my career I saw people at some of the worst times in their lives.  People who had suffered great harm and great pain, and yet found within themselves the strength and the courage and the resolve to take the stand, to take a stand, to fight for justice, to fight for themselves, to fight for others. So let their courage be our inspiration. Let their determination be our charge. And I'll close with this. There's an adage a historian once called a law of history, true of every society across the ages. The adage is, only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. I know many people feel like we are entering a dark time, but for the benefit of us all, I hope that is not the case. But here's the thing, America, if it is, let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars.

The light, the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.

And may that work guide us even in the face of setbacks toward the extraordinary promise of the United States of America. I thank you all. Make God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America. I thank you all."

Watch Harris' full concession speech following Trump win; MSNBC, November 6, 2024

MSNBC ; Watch Harris' full concession speech following Trump win

"Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the nation after her loss to former President Donald Trump, formally ending her campaign. She pledged her loyalty to the Constitution and delivered a message to the young people in the audience."