When Daniel Francis enters a voting booth, ballot measures can be very anxiety-inducing: many are above his reading level.

“If it’s using words that I don’t understand, I just kind of rush on to answer, whether I know what it means or not,” says Francis, who lives with mental disabilities including autism and ADHD. Francis likes voting at the polls without assistance, as it’s a way for him to feel independent.

A Ballotpedia analysis of ballot measures voted on in 2023 found that, on average, they required a graduate-school reading level to understand. That can be a challenge for most people who haven’t pursued higher education, let alone people with intellectual disabilities or symptoms that affect their cognition, like those experiencing brain fog from the chronic illness fibromyalgia.

Having accessible ballots “would empower more people to be able to vote without assistance,” says Alexia Kemerling, who helps coordinate efforts to make voting more accessible at the American Association of People with Disabilities. 

This past April, Francis was part of a group of disability self-advocates who met with Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows to discuss the possibility of making ballot measures more accessible to disabled voters—which can also be helpful to other groups, such as English language learners.

In 2023, lawmakers in both North Dakota and New York passed legislation to put ballot measures in plain language, which is designed to be easier to understand on a first reading, and often includes active voice, shorter sentences and paragraphs, and the use of common words. In New York, ballot measures now can’t exceed an eighth-grade reading level. 

“I think having that reading level stipulation, and actually having something to measure it against, is going to be really impactful in New York,” Kemerling said. 

The impassioned push for more accessible ballots in Maine started last November, after the failure of a measure to remove language from its constitution barring people with mental disabilities under guardianship from voting. (People in Maine under guardianship for mental disabilities nevertheless have the right to vote due to a 2001 federal court ruling—the measure would have removed the defunct language.)

In discussions with other disabled people after that 2023 election, Francis found that several hadn’t understood exactly what the Maine measure was asking:

Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to remove a provision prohibiting a person under guardianship for reasons of mental illness from voting for Governor, Senators and Representatives, which the United States District Court for the District of Maine found violates the United States Constitution and federal law?

“For the vast majority of voters,” said Molly Thompson, a voting access advocate with Disability Rights Maine, “that’s really confusing to understand—if something was deemed unconstitutional, why was it not immediately removed from Maine’s constitution?”

Writing in plain language doesn’t necessarily mean being concise, which Maine’s constitution requires for ballot measures written by the secretary of state (measures written by the legislature do not have this requirement). In fact, when ballot measures are written in plain language, they tend to run longer, Kemerling says, which is a challenge to getting some election officials on board. “It’s important that election officials are willing to ask for and allocate [the] costs to having more accessible elections,” she said, suggesting the compromise of a separate, plain-language sheet explaining ballot measures on request.

Some other states also have plain language requirements, though they’re not as far-reaching as New York and North Dakota’s. Alabama requires a plain language summary of state ballot initiatives to be available online, and in Texas, ballot initiatives that specifically touch on debt are supposed to be written in plain language.

Francis hopes that politicians in Maine will also get on board with more understandable ballots, so more disabled people feel confident voting. The way ballot measures are written now, Francis said, can lead to disabled people like him feeling “like they’re being discouraged to vote.”

The saga of Guo Wengui—the Chinese mogul-turned-MAGA-influencer who is on trial in Manhattan federal court—involves an international political movement with the audacious goal of overthrowing China’s government. It includes former top advisers to Donald Trump. There is talk of intelligence operations, an FBI counterintelligence probe, and allegations that Guo may actually be a Chinese double agent, which he denies. Guo has underwritten crackpot claims that Covid is a Chinese bioweapon, spread smut from Hunter Biden’s laptop, and secretly steered funds to help Trump try to steal the 2020 election.

But the criminal case against Guo is simpler. Behind the spy games and Trump ties, it’s about fraud. Guo is accused of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from thousands of his own political followers through simple investment scams.

The alleged victims of this scheme are Chinese-speaking emigres who were drawn to Guo beginning in 2017 due to his claim to be a leading critic of the Chinese Communist Party. These supporters joined online clubs that were part of what Guo called his “Whistleblower Movement.” In 2020, many began pouring money into “investment opportunities” he offered. Guo allegedly diverted those funds to pay for the lifestyle of a supposed billionaire, buying a mansion, a $4.4 million car, $978,000 in rugs, a yacht, and $36,000 mattresses he slept on while his fans lost their shirts.

“Miles Guo stole my money,” Jenny Li, a Nevada resident who emigrated from China about 20 years ago, testified through an interpreter Tuesday, referring to one of the various names Guo uses. “I was cheated,” she said later.

Li said she first learned of Guo after Voice of America cut off a live interview he did with that news outlet in April 2017, allegedly in response to Chinese government complaints about claims Guo made during the broadcast about CCP corruption. When Guo and former Trump aide Steve Bannon announced the launch of a nonprofit that would supposedly advance the rule of law in China—with $100 million Guo pledged to donate himself, but never did—Li contributed around $6,000, she said.

Like many Guo fans, she made a habit of watching almost all of the hours-long videos that Guo posted online most days.

In April 2020, Guo told his fans he was giving them the chance to invest in a video streaming and news company called GTV. He said the company would develop technology to evade Beijing’s censors, giving an outside perspective to millions of Chinese viewers. He also claimed that investors were guaranteed not to loss money. These, prosecutors say, were lies. But many Guo fans believed him.

Li testified that she invested more than $100,000 through various mechanisms Guo created to allow his backers to supposedly buy into GTV. She said that she raised the money by getting a second mortgage.

Most of those funds disappeared. Li eventually recovered around $18,500, via a program the SEC set up to compensate Guo’s victims. The rest was gone. “I didn’t get anything back,” Li said.

Le Zhou, a Florida realtor who first came to the United States in 1998 for college, also learned of Guo in 2017, when he began watching Guo’s YouTube videos. Zhou testified on May 28 that he backed Guo’s movement due to his own family’s suffering in China. He, too, gave first to Guo’s nonprofit, the Rule of Law Foundation.

Zhou eventually put around $120,000 of his personal funds into Guo’s investment offerings. He testified that he sold his home and tapped his wife’s life insurance to raise that money.

Zhou said he believed Guo’s supposed “personal guarantee” to GTV investors that he would repay them to cover any losses. Zhou said that he also accepted Guo’s claim that GTV investments would be used to improve GTV’s technology to help it compete with companies like YouTube, and that he bought into GTV’s supposed political purpose.

“GTV website also is for the freedom of voice for other Chinese people,” Zhou said. “I was follower myself. I [was] really a believer for this movement. I want to just be part of it and also to help grow this GTV.”

But Zhou said never received GTV stock. And when he sought to recover his funds, Guo did not step in. The SEC did, helping Zhou to recoup some of his funds. He ultimately lost $30,000, he said.

In addition, without telling GTV investors, Guo gave $100 million of the capital he raised to a hedge fund that was making what proved to be a failed bet shorting Hong Kong’s currency. Guo lost $30 million in GTV funds through the move.

Zhou said he would not have invested had he known the money would be used in a risky investment scheme rather than to grow GTV’s business.

Another alleged victim, Patrick Chin, a Texas-based engineer who grew up in Taiwan, testified last week that would not have invested about $20,000 in GTV had he known Guo’s guarantee against losses was false, or that Guo would use investor money to speculate on currency.

“I was pretty simple mind[ed] that this money will be used to build the platform, not reinvest,” Chin said.

Li, Zhou, and Chin—testifying in a courtroom packed with dozens of Guo’s remaining backers—each described a harsh reaction by Guo to followers who questioned Guo and his underlings about what happened to their money.

Zhou said he was effectively thrown out of the movement after he sought a refund on a portion of his investments. In a social media post entered into evidence, other Guo fans announced that Zhou was blacklisted for a “malicious attack” on Guo’s movement and financial ventures. At the time, Zhou had issued zero criticism of Guo, he said, apart from seeking a refund.

Li described a 2021 conference call in which Guo berated a man who asked for his GTV investment back. Guo labeled the man a CCP agent and had him booted off the call, she recalled. Li, who cried while describing this meeting, said she too, wanted to ask for her money back, but “did not dare” after seeing Guo’s reaction.

In her testimony, Li likened Guo’s movement to “a multi-level marketing scheme” run by “organized mafia.”

Chin said that his skepticism about the movement grew as he watched Guo repeatedly smear critics as Chinese agents.

“In the beginning, there were few people who left, and they were very quickly labeled as traitor or CCP spies,” Chin said. “At the time it’s very shocking, but it seems believable. But as more and more people left and more and more people were labeled as CCP, CCP spies, that became not very reasonable.”

“My feeling right now is, it’s like other cults,” Chin said. “You believe the leader and you cannot ask questions, but then some people who, quote-unquote, ‘wake up’ were able to have that effect on me.”

Guo did not use email or communicate one-on-one with his followers, despite issuing directives in videos, over WhatsApp, and in large meetings. His lawyers have used that fact to suggest that Guo’s underlings may have defrauded his followers without his involvement.

But victims who testified insisted it was Guo who conned them.

“I feel all the good intention, not [just] myself, many people were abused,” Chin said. “We tried to support a pro-democracy movement or transparency of information to Chinese people, but we were scammed.”

To hear Michael Flynn tell it, he belongs in the pantheon of great American martyrs alongside President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., leaders who spoke truth to power and paid for it with their lives. “I’m surprised they haven’t killed me,” the former Trump national security adviser says in his new eponymous film. “I’m surprised that they let me continue to live…we’ve gone from a physical assassination of a president of the United States to a character assassination of a national security adviser.”

Flynn: Deliver the Truth. Whatever the Cost. is a two-hour effort to rehabilitate the image of the three-star general who was once considered a brilliant military intelligence officer, but, since getting fired by President Obama in 2014 from his post as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, has generated an endless string of scandalous headlines.

Among his greatest hits: accepting $45,000 to attend a 2015 dinner in Moscow, where he sat next to Vladimir Putin; leading anti-Clinton chants of “Lock her up!” at the 2016 Republican National Convention; working as an unregistered foreign agent for the authoritarian Turkish government while advising Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. Then there was his guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign, his pardon by Trump, and his attempt to persuade Trump to use the military to overturn the 2020 election results. It’s quite a record, and the reason why a press release for the film describes Flynn as “the most maligned American General in modern US history.”

After the 2020 election, Flynn managed to convert his pariah status into a political movement through his remarkably successful ReAwaken America tour, a series of conferences that resemble a tent revival, only with a mishmash of anti-vaxxers, self-proclaimed prophets, election deniers like MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell, QAnon adherents, and an assortment of Trump family members. Several thousand people showed up for the one I attended in Pennsylvania in 2022.

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat told the AP in 2022 that Flynn is “one of the most dangerous individuals in America today.” She explained, “He is spearheading the attack on our democracy, which is coming from many quarters, and he is affiliated with many of these sectors, from the military to Christian nationalism to election denial to extremist groups. All of this comes together to present a very live threat. And he’s at the center.”

The ReAwaken tour seems to be winding down ahead of the election. For the past two months, Flynn has instead been traveling in a tour bus to churches and community centers in outposts like Branson, Missouri, and Fargo, North Dakota, to screen a film that promises to expose “the intricate web of political intrigue and the severe persecution General Flynn faced after exposing deep-seated corruption within the corridors of power.” His most devoted followers could even score $200 VIP tickets that offered photo ops with the general, plus a tote bag full of Flynn swag.

In early May, I drove to Charleston, West Virginia, to see how Flynn’s new film venture was faring without the extensive supporting cast of the ReAwaken America events. I also hoped it might reveal what’s next for a man Trump once considered as a possible running mate and who never seems far from the former president’s orbit.  

When I arrived, Flynn’s tour bus was parked outside a West Virginia State University auditorium. The historically Black university seemed an incongruous venue given Flynn’s popularity among white nationalists, but then I learned that today its student body is almost 80 percent white. Inside, Flynn’s famous murder boards lined a corridor. Photos, news clippings, printouts of Trump tweets, dates of notable events, and many highlights from special counsel Robert Mueller‘s Russia investigation covered the huge panels, all crisscrossed with pinned-up strings like a serial killer investigation.

I felt as if I’d stumbled into the scene from A Beautiful Mind, when Alicia Nash enters her math genius husband’s office and discovers that instead of doing math, he had been spending his days plastering the walls with conspiratorial detritus, also connected by strings. John Nash suffered from schizophrenia; Flynn says two fans made his boards.

I ducked into the auditorium just as someone from Flynn’s crew appeared to be rounding up the few members of the media—not for interviews, as I discovered later, but to chuck them out. Inside, most of the seats had been roped off to force the 50 or so attendees to cluster at the front thereby creating the illusion of a full house. A giant photo of Flynn in profile loomed over the stage, with a gun sight superimposed over his stern visage. Iraq war veteran Boone Cutler, who suffered a traumatic brain injury from a 2005 mortar attack, served as MC for the night.

Cutler warmed up the room by asking where people had come from. “The People’s Republic of Fairfax County!” one Virginia man exclaimed. One of the few Black attendees volunteered that she’d flown in from Savanah, Georgia, where she’d seen the film once before. Many, if not most, of the audience seemed to have come at the urging of “special guest” Derrick Evans, a January 6 rioter who was running for a West Virginia congressional seat.

“How many of you think Gen. Flynn went to jail?” Cutler asked the audience members. About two-thirds of them raised their hands. “You’ve all been the subject of an intelligence operation!” Cutler told them with a laugh, before informing them that Flynn never went to jail. There was the requisite singing of the national anthem, a plug for the tour sponsor, Beverly Hills Precious Metals Exchange—Flynn’s “gold buyer of choice”—and finally, the film.

Early images in Flynn harken back to the general’s childhood, much of which he spent on the beach in Rhode Island, surfing in the cold water off the Atlantic coast, a passion he still pursues. Copious footage of the shirtless, 65-year-old paddling out to sea evokes a waterborne version of Putin’s horseback riding portraits.

The film is a family affair. Flynn is the sixth of nine siblings from a Democratic working-class family, and four of them appear in the film, along with Flynn’s wife Lori, son Michael Jr., and a weepy niece who helped run his legal defense fund.

On screen, Flynn narrates his personal history from what looks like a home situation room, surrounded by walls covered in maps, a classroom-size whiteboard, and tables big enough to accommodate plans to sack the US Capitol or kidnap Turkish religious leaders. From this retirement command post, the former Army paratrooper recounts an early, formative experience, one in which, he says, “I really learned about being steady.”

Shortly after taking command of a battalion of several hundred people, he was summoned to the site of a fatal helicopter crash. “The smell of the fuel that was burning, the bodies that were burned, you’re standing right there going ‘holy crap,’” he says ruefully. “Nine people.” Flynn doesn’t specify the location of the crash, but his despair over all the senseless deaths he’s witnessed—and participated in—permeates the film.

It’s hard not to wonder whether battlefield trauma lies at the root of whatever set him on his current path. His critique of the failed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan radiates bitterness. He takes some legitimate potshots at the late Secretary of State Colin Powell, who played a key role in justifying the Iraq invasion. Then again, Flynn just may have been nursing a grudge against Powell, who once referred to him as a “jerk” and “right-wing nutty” in emails leaked in 2016.

The whole film is like that. Just when I thought one of his earnest rants might lead to a genuine insight into Flynn’s psyche, a Google search would expose it as simply a variation on long-simmering and frequently aired grievances by someone who has never forgiven Barack Obama for warning Trump not to hire him.

Likewise, the film makes his claims of being the victim of an abusive Justice Department seem almost plausible. But then someone like Tracy Beanz pops up to provide color commentary. Identified as an “investigative journalist” in the film, Beanz, whose real name is Tracy Diaz, was an early promoter of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that an elite Democratic cabal has been running a global pedophile ring. Flynn embraced the cult-like movement a few years ago, going so far as to post a video of himself in 2020 reciting the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”

So many fringe players populate the film that I had to look up the backstory of almost everyone who appeared on screen for a refresher. One character I didn’t have to look up was Tucker Carlson, who calls Flynn’s story “inspiring.” The former Fox News host sees parallels between the general and JFK, who he suggests was killed by the government. If you’re Flynn, he says, “I think it’s fair to expect that they will try to kill you—maybe not shoot you in Dealy Plaza, but put you in prison, impoverish your family, silence you, dismiss you in the eyes of most as ridiculous.”

A triumph of revisionist history, Flynn is another example of just how good right-wing filmmakers have gotten at making these sorts of propaganda films. Producer Scott Wiper does a masterful job of presenting a man who once suggested that Covid vaccines were being secretly distributed through salad dressing as eminently reasonable. Flynn reminded me of Dinesh D’Souza’s latest epic, Police State, which I saw in a theater last year.

Like Flynn, D’Souza was pardoned by Trump, in his case, for a felony conviction for organizing straw donations to a New York Senate candidate. Police State dramatically reimagined D’Souza’s prosecution as retaliation for his truth-telling, complete with the gun-sight imagery. I came away from it momentarily convinced that the rioters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 were in fact “nonviolent protesters” and victims of corrupt jack-booted FBI agents. Police State was utterly impossible to fact-check in real-time.

I was similarly disoriented watching Flynn, which tries to recast all his many tribulations as the product of a rogue state bent on silencing a brave dissident, rather than as the consequences of his own misdeeds. It’s so convincing that when I returned home from Charleston, I suggested to my media-critic husband that perhaps Flynn really was getting a bad rap from reporters.

After coming to my senses, it took me days in the archives, reading through mountains of old legal filings and profiles of Flynn, to untangle the facts from fiction. For example, in the film, Flynn repeatedly insists that he never discussed easing sanctions with Russian ambassador Sergev Kislyak in the intercepted call that led to his criminal prosecution. Well, here’s the declassified transcript of the call showing that he did indeed discuss sanctions. (In the film, Flynn claims that this public version of the transcript, which was provided to members of Congress, is fake.)

Or how about Flynn’s portrayal of the “pardon of innocence” he says he neither wanted nor needed from Trump? As one of the film’s leading villains, US District Judge Emmet Sullivan, observed, the pardon “does not, standing alone, render (Mr. Flynn) innocent of the alleged violation.” And the pardon Trump gave Flynn, which can be found here, says nothing about innocence.

Skillfully deployed omissions are one of Flynn’s specialties. Lawyer Sidney Powell is lionized for helping the retired general try to withdraw his guilty plea in the Russia case, but she’s not interviewed in the movie—probably for good reason. After playing a central role in the “Stop the Steal” campaign, she pleaded guilty in October to six misdemeanor counts for conspiring to help Trump overturn the election.

Flynn was subpoenaed to appear before the special grand jury in that case because, among other things, he appeared on Newsmax in December 2020 and proposed that Trump dispatch the military to swing states “and basically re-run an election in each of those states.” He also had joined Powell at the White House to lobby for invoking martial law and seizing voting machines. The special grand jury recommended indicting him, too, but Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis declined to bring charges. None of this is covered in the film, which draws to a jubilant close not long after the general secures the pardon he says he didn’t need.

As I watched happy scenes of the shirtless retiree shooting hoops with his brother in the pool—he played water polo in college—I asked myself why I was wasting so much time on a movie about a guy I’m not sure anyone still cares about. I realized I had wanted the film to answer the greatest mystery that still makes Flynn so interesting: How did he get here? Why did a decorated military general known for his brilliance in military intelligence wake up one day and decide to take the QAnon oath? Why did such a renowned straight talker plead the Fifth dozens of times when he was deposed by the House January 6 committee?

People have been asking these questions for years, but as yet, no one has discovered the unifying theory of Michael Flynn that explains his transformation. His film doesn’t provide one either. If Flynn the movie fails to shed much light on the unraveling of Flynn the man, it does succeed as a painful reminder of what the Trump years were like—with all the chaos and corruption—and a foreshadowing of what might happen should he be elected again.

In Charleston, I overheard people chattering about how much they’d like to see Trump pick Flynn as his 2024 running mate now that he’d dumped that traitor, Mike Pence, whose appearance in the film prompted a hail of boos from the audience. During the Q&A, an audience member asked Flynn directly whether he would return to public service. In response, he turned, raised his eyebrows, and tilted his head sadly towards his photo with the gun target on it, before hinting that he very well might do so should Trump get elected.

He hasn’t completely eschewed politics. In September 2022, he was elected to the GOP executive board in Sarasota County, Florida. That same year, the AP calculated that Flynn endorsed 99 candidates for various offices. In Charleston, two West Virginia candidates he’d endorsed joined him on stage: Evans, the January 6 rioter, and Mac Warner, who was running for governor. (A few days later, they were both crushed in the GOP primary.)

Last year, Trump was speaking regularly about Flynn serving in a second administration. “You just have to stay healthy because we’re bringing you back,” Trump told Flynn in May 2023, when he called a ReAwaken event at the Trump Doral in Miami. “We’re going to bring you back.”

Trump’s campaign team seems to have tamped down his public promises of a Flynn return, but that hasn’t kept the controversial general away from the former president. When his nonprofit group America’s Future held a fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago in March 2024, Trump appeared on stage with Flynn. “You’re a great guy,” Trump said. “I just want to thank you for all you’ve done for the country.” 

During the Q&A in Charleston, Flynn warned that a Trump victory in the fall “is not a given.” If history is any guide, he added, “we will have about 30 million Christians who won’t vote” in the presidential election. “We just cannot have that.”

He urged attendees to organize their churches, cast a ballot, and of course, buy some of his books. Then Flynn asked people to stand for a closing prayer. MC Boone Cutler did the honors, on behalf of people “who want this country cleaned and cleansed.” He asked for the Lord’s help in persuading those skeptical of Flynn’s message. It was nearly 10 pm when the tour bus pulled up to the door, ready to help Flynn deliver the truth, whatever the cost, in Blakely, Pennsylvania, his next stop.

This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This April, at a steak dinner with oil and gas executives at the Mar-a-Lago Club, in Florida, former President Donald Trump made a request backed by a hefty promise: If the CEOs in attendance raised $1 billion to support his reelection bid, he would lower their taxes and eviscerate environmental and public health protections once he became president, clearing away the “regulatory burdens” that stand in the way of their companies injecting more carbon into the atmosphere—and profiting handsomely from it.

According to reporting by the Washington Post, Trump promised to reverse dozens of Biden administration policies, including a moratorium on approvals for liquefied natural gas exports, new restrictions on Arctic drilling, and many regulations of oil and gas drilling on public land. For good measure, he’d also scrap electric vehicle mandates and bring an immediate end to all offshore wind development.

Judging from Trump’s record, he fully intends to fulfill these promises, and then some. And his mission will be backed by a playbook—alarming for its extreme approach—fashioned by a right-wing coalition intent on dismantling the administrative state.

It’s astounding that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee can solicit a billion-dollar bribe to sell out America’s public lands and not be immediately disqualified or even prosecuted. After all, one-time Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was disgraced and tossed into jail for doing the same thing, in an incident known as the Teapot Dome scandal in the 1920s. Even more dumbfounding is that, according to some polls, President Biden and Trump are statistically tied among young voters on the issue of climate change.

The reason for this is simple—and, I might add, simplistic. In March 2020, during a Democratic presidential debate, then-candidate Biden said his climate policy included “no more drilling on federal land.” He made a similar statement during a town hall in 2019. And yet, during the first four months of 2024, the Bureau of Land Management issued 969 permits to drill. So much for “no more drilling.” And that’s not all: In 2023, the administration approved a scaled-back—yet still massive and highly destructive—version of the controversial Willow drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope.

Climate advocates are right to hold Biden’s feet to the fire, and to count these moves as black marks on his record. But it is naive, foolish, and destructive to let these missteps obscure the administration’s more subtle, but ultimately more meaningful, actions to protect the climate and public lands from the fossil fuel industry. To see no difference between Biden and Trump is simply ignorant.

Biden’s public land and climate policies were all over the place during his first two years in office, but more recently he has cemented his legacy as a conservationist. In late April I wrote about a slew of new public lands protections enacted by the administration. In the weeks since, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency has implemented new rules limiting coal power plants’ emissions of greenhouse gasses, mercury, and other toxic air pollutants; tightening regulations on coal ash disposal; and clamping down on wastewater releases by power plants. Additionally, the BLM proposed ending federal coal leasing in America’s largest coal field, Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which signals a potential death knell for a declining industry. The BLM also canceled 25 oil and gas leases in a 40,000-acre area of southeastern Utah that is rich with cultural resources.

Since a Donald Trump “climate policy” is a contradiction in terms, we’ll look instead at Trump’s energy aims, which consist of little more than “unlock(ing) our country’s God-given abundance of oil, natural gas, and clean coal” by shredding environmental and public health protections at the behest of billionaire petroleum executives. Never mind that those same executives have boasted about achieving record-high domestic oil production and liquefied natural gas exports under the Biden administration. Never mind that ExxonMobil brought in $8.6 billion in after-tax profits during the first three months of the year—not too shabby for an industry purportedly under siege by radical environmentalists.

Since the Trump campaign lacks a concrete platform, a group of right-wing organizations calling themselves Project 2025 have taken it upon themselves to fashion an agenda and even a staff for the next administration to “rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left.” The coalition has published a document called “Mandate for Leadership,” which lays out a playbook for each government sector, providing an eerie glimpse into a second Trump presidency.

The chapter on the Department of the Interior was penned by none other than William Perry Pendley, a notorious anti-public lands zealot who served as Trump’s acting director of the BLM—illegitimately. In it, Pendley unabashedly advocates for returning to the pre-multiple use days, when the BLM was known as the Bureau of Livestock and Mining. He reiterates the absurd claim that wild horses pose an existential threat to public lands and calls for the immediate “rollback of Biden’s orders” and the reinstatement of “the Trump-era Energy Dominance Agenda.” Per the playbook, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the rest of the region would be reopened to drilling; the full Willow project (five drill sites rather than the scaled-back three) would be approved; coal leasing would be restored; drilling permits would be expedited; methane emissions rules and other pollution limits would be rescinded; national monuments would be shrunk or eliminated; protections for sage grouse, grizzlies, wolves and other imperiled species would be removed; and the administration would try to repeal the Antiquities Act of 1906.

And that’s just the DOI chapter. The Energy Department and EPA sections strike similar notes, calling on Trump to, among other things, “Stop the war on oil and natural gas;” lift the moratorium on liquefied natural gas export approvals (and stop considering climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects); support repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both of which have created thousands of jobs in the clean energy and climate change mitigation industries; shift the departments’ focus away from climate change and renewable energy; end greenhouse gas emissions reporting for all but a select few facilities; and roll back coal plant pollution regulations.

The damage inflicted during Trump’s first term was somewhat mitigated by the administration’s incompetence. Project 2025’s 920-page playbook looks to remedy that, supplementing Trump’s greed and power-hunger with corporate-backed ideology and expertise. In office, Trump would create an authoritarian regime that cracks down on civil liberties, criminalizes immigrants, and bolsters the police state, while also letting corporate interests run wild at the expense of the planet and its most vulnerable people.

A recent report from Wood Mackenzie, a natural resource analytics firm, predicts that a Trump victory in November would bring an “immediate deceleration in support for decarbonization” and “unabated fossil generation would expand.” The report warns that “These steps would push the US even further away from a net zero emissions pathway.”

Biden may have broken a promise, but when it comes to Trump vs. Biden on the climate, the contrast couldn’t be more stark.

In one of his most pointed criticisms of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yet, President Biden suggested that the Israeli leader may be dragging out the war in Gaza for his political benefit.

“There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion,” Biden told Time in a new wide-ranging interview published Wednesday.

The president also said that he believed some of Israel’s actions in the war have been “inappropriate” and a “mistake.”

The new interview, which was conducted May 28, comes days after Biden announced a new three-stage deal to end the war—including a ceasefire, the release of hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza—and said that it is “time for the suffering to stop.” His answers to Time were, at times, vague and contradictory, but amounted to some of his most direct public criticism of Netanyahu and the Israeli military since the war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took more than 250 hostages, including some Americans.

Netanyahu has grown increasingly unpopular among Israelis since the start of the war, due in part to his inability to free the hostages; Israeli officials have also threatened to resign and demanded Netanyahu publicly promise that Israel will not indefinitely occupy Gaza. Meanwhile, Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, said last week the war could last through the end of the year.

When it came to the question of whether Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, as International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan publicly alleged last month, Biden was more tepid in the Time interview: “The answer is it’s uncertain and has been investigated by the Israelis themselves…But one thing is certain, the people in Gaza, the Palestinians have suffered greatly, for lack of food, water, medicine, etc. And a lot of innocent people have been killed,” Biden said, adding that “a lot of it has to do not just with Israelis, but what Hamas is doing in Israel as we speak.”

According to the latest numbers from the Associated Press, the war has killed more than 36,000 Palestinians, in addition to the 1,200 Israelis killed on Oct. 7. Officials have described the humanitarian crisis in Gaza as “absolutely catastrophic.” Samantha Power, the top US humanitarian official, said in April that famine was likely underway in parts of Gaza, and the situation has only grown more dire following the Israeli seizure of the Rafah border crossings. And recent reports, including one in the Washington Post, have alleged that some radical Israeli settlers have attacked aid trucks bound for Gaza, preventing crucial supplies from getting in.

But when the Time reporter asked if Biden believed that Israel was intentionally starving civilians, allegations that are included in the I.C.C. applications for arrest warrants, he said: “No, I don’t think that. I think they’ve engaged in activity that is inappropriate.”

He continued, saying that he advised Israeli officials not to “make the same mistake we did going after [Osama] bin Laden…it led to endless wars.”

“Don’t make the mistakes we made,” Biden said. “And they’re making that mistake, I think.”

It remains unclear if Israel and Hamas will accept the plan that Biden announced on Friday. Netanyahu’s allies have since expressed strong opposition to the proposal; Hamas has signaled a more positive reaction. But while Biden urges the two sides to accept the deal, as my colleague Noah Lanard wrote, there is still a lot Biden could do independently if he was serious about ending the war, including ending the sending of weapons to Israel, increasing aid to Gaza, and ensuring compliance with federal laws that restrict U.S. support for nations restricting American aid and implicated in “gross violations of human rights.”

On Tuesday, the Biden administration issued a new sweeping executive order further limiting access to asylum at the US-Mexico border. The long-anticipated move, which relies on an authority previously invoked by the Trump administration to restrict immigration, will allow border officials to temporarily suspend asylum processing between official ports of entry and swiftly return migrants to neighboring Mexico and countries of origin at times when crossings rise to a certain threshold. The directive, which mirrors a now-defunct Senate border deal, is set to go into effect on Tuesday at midnight.

“President Biden believes we must secure our border,” a White House statement reads. “That is why today, he announced executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today.”

This latest and likely most drastic crackdown on asylum by a Democratic president in recent years comes at a time when migrant encounters at the southern border are in decline after record-breaking levels of migration. The move consolidates President Biden’s marked rightward shift on immigration and signals how far the administration is willing to go to rebut Republicans and Donald Trump’s “open borders” accusations. Critics and advocates say that, in trying to come on top of a sticky electoral issue ahead of the November vote, Biden might just end up outdoing his opponent’s hardline record by gutting access to asylum.

“It’s notable to see the White House prep a POTUS event on policies that Dems used to call illegal,” Andrea R. Flores, who once served as director for border management on Biden’s National Security Council, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, prior to the announcement. “Pundits will say this is a smart move to the center on immigration, but this issue has moved so far to the right that Dems are embracing extreme asylum bans even when border numbers are down.”

The executive order is based on section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act which allows the president to suspend the entry of foreigners if “detrimental to the interests” of the United States. The directive places a cap on the processing of asylum claims and migrants that would be triggered once unlawful border crossings reach an average of 2,500 per day over a week. The partial ban would only be lifted 14 days after the weekly average of daily encounters fall to 1,500.

Last month, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded a daily average of 3,700 encounters between ports of entry—a significant decrease from the 8,000 registered in December, but still high enough to set off the border closure. The executive order, which includes exemptions for unaccompanied minors and migrants fleeing imminent harm, is likely to prompt legal challenges—and potential court orders blocking the effort—similar to the ones the Trump administration faced.

BREAKING: The Biden administration just announced an executive order that will severely restrict people's legal right to seek asylum, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk.

This action takes the same approach as the Trump administration's asylum ban. We will be challenging…

— ACLU (@ACLU) June 4, 2024

In a 10-minute announcement, Biden blamed Republicans for not taking congressional action to secure the border. “Frankly, I’d have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation,” he said, adding that “Republicans left me no choice.”

The president also tried to distance himself from the Trump administration. “I will never demonize immigrants,” he said. “I’ll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. And further, I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I will not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs. I will not use the US military to go into neighborhoods all across the country, to pull millions of people out of their homes and away from their families, to put detention camps while we’re waiting deportation, as my predecessor says he will do if he occupies this office again.”

The timing of the policy move follows the results of the presidential elections in Mexico that saw Claudia Sheinbaum, a protege of outgoing leader Andrés Manuel López Obrador, elected the country’s first woman president. The recent drop in migrant crossings into the United States is due in no small part to the Mexican government’s increased clampdown on migration. The return of migrants and asylum seekers per the executive order would inevitably require Mexico’s cooperation.

Almost since the moment Biden took office having vowed to restore “moral leadership” on immigration, he has been hit with a barrage of attacks from Republicans determined to weaponize the immigration debate to score political points. Despite calls from advocates and immigration experts to espouse an openly pro-immigrant agenda and underscore a fundamental contrast between Biden and Trump, the administration and Democrats have instead gradually ceded ground to the right.

“This is a dark day for the Biden administration,” Azadeh Erfani, senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said. “After campaigning on restoring asylum access, Biden is now fully embracing Trump’s policies as his own, including now using the same statute that led to the Muslim and African bans.” This crackdown on asylum, she added, is unlikely to have the intended effect of managing the border. “If we learned anything from the Trump years,” Erfani said, “it is that even the cruelest policies cannot succeed in “deterring” people fleeing for their lives.”

In January, Biden had already promised to “shut down” the border when calling on Congress to pass a restrictive bipartisan Senate border deal that primarily delivered on Republicans’ border enforcement priorities. The proposed bill, which Trump successfully torpedoed to keep the border a salient issue he can hammer on to appeal to his base, has twice failed to gain enough support. Most recently, Senate Republicans—including Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, one of the champions of the original bipartisan push—blocked a renewed attempt by Democrats at passing a deal, decrying it as political theater.

With lawmakers from both parties playing the blame game, Biden has latched on Republicans’ obstruction as a campaign target. “Congressional Republicans do not care about securing the border or fixing America’s broken immigration system,” Biden said in a May statement after the border deal. “If they did, they would have voted for the toughest border enforcement in history.” In the process, he is doubling down on the enforcement-first rhetoric to claim, “I’ve done all I can do.”

The word “genocide” was coined in 1941 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish lawyer from a Polish family, who combined the Greek word for a people (genos) and the Latin translation for killing (cide). At its most basic, genocide meant systematically destroying another group. Lemkin laid it out as a two-phase, often colonial process in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: First, the oppressor erases the “national pattern” of the victim. Then, it imposes its own. Genocide stretched from antiquity (Carthage) to modern times (Ireland).

“The term does not necessarily signify mass killings although it may mean that,” Lemkin explained in a 1945 article. “More often it refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations”—cultural institutions, physical structures, the economy—“of the life of national groups.” The “machine gun” was merely a “last resort.”

Lemkin was a lawyer, not a sociologist. By birthing the term “genocide,” he was not trying to taxonomize the horrors of war. Instead, Lemkin—who lost 49 family members in the Holocaust—hoped that he could identify a crime to stop it. Nazi terror could not simply be Germany’s “internal problem.” With genocide, Lemkin hoped to give legal and moral weight to international intervention. He hoped to bring into being an offense that could be policed and, in turn, stopped in a new and supposedly civilized world.

Today, as Israel stands accused by South Africa of genocide before the International Court of Justice for the methods used in its war on Gaza, it is worth recalling Lemkin’s arguments. The question of Israel’s actions has been a narrow one: Has the killing met the criteria for genocide under current international law? But Lemkin’s broader conception of the term—though it has been chipped away at by courts and has faded from public memory—has been less discussed.

The sad reality is that Israel’s actions likely met Lemkin’s original definition long before the war on Gaza. Starting in 1947, roughly 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled by Israel and barred from returning. After the 1967 war, Israel began occupying the remainder of what was once Palestine. It has since settled hundreds of thousands of people on that land, while subjecting Palestinians to what international human rights groups increasingly consider to be a system of apartheid. The goal of its settlement policy has been clear: to replace one cultural fabric with another.

Israel is not the only nation whose actions fit Lemkin’s conception of genocide. The same could be said of the formation of the United States and the mass slaughter of Native Americans. (In fact, Lemkin listed it as a textbook case.) What is different now is a more obvious hypocrisy after decades of international governance designed to create a supposedly new, rules-based order.

“Genocide” represented Lemkin’s desire to move toward this internationally policed peace. Douglas Irvin-­Erickson, a George Mason professor who wrote an intellectual biography of Lemkin, said he aspired for a form of world citizenship that reflected his “stunningly broad indictment of oppressive state powers.”

It’s no surprise then that when making it a crime after World War II, nations were careful to protect themselves. The Soviet Union removed political groups from those that could be victims of genocide, to secure a free hand for its purges of dissidents. The United States kept Lemkin’s ideas about cultural genocide out, lest it be in violation for Jim Crow laws. The convention was a “lynching bill in disguise” in the words of a Louisiana segregationist. (Congress only ratified the genocide treaty in 1988 after Ronald Reagan caused a backlash by laying a wreath at a German military cemetery that included the graves of 49 members of the SS.)

“Outlawing genocide becomes this marker of a civilized society,” Irvin-Erickson explained. “But at the same time, [Lemkin] is watching the delegates who are negotiating the Genocide Convention, and they’re literally writing their own genocides out of the law.” His greatest allies came from what is now called the Global South—the nations that had been, or reasonably feared becoming, victims.

Since the Genocide Convention’s adoption, international courts have arrived at a narrow reading of the already narrow interpretation of Lemkin’s concept, says Leila Sadat, the James Carr Professor of International Criminal Law at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The emphasis of the law is determining whether a country or individual has killed massive numbers of a group of people, and whether they did so with a provable intent to destroy that group. This poses a problem for prosecutors since most perpetrators of genocide are not as transparent as Adolf Hitler.  

This winnowing of what counts as genocide would have deeply frustrated Lemkin. As Irvin-Erickson has written, genocide was “not a spontaneous occurrence” for Lemkin but a “process that begins long before and continues long after the physical killing of the victims.” Melanie O’Brien, a visiting professor at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, emphasized that the dehumanization that leads to one group killing another en masse is not a prelude to genocide but a part of it.

But because its definition has been narrowed, Rwanda has been the most clear-cut case of genocide since the Holocaust according to international judges. For the horrors that occurred in Bosnia, a seemingly textbook genocide of Bosnian Muslims at the hands of Slobodan Milošević and fellow Serbs, only the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica cleared the bar as an act of genocide in international trials of Serbian war criminals. (Milošević died in prison before any conviction could be secured.)

In the eyes of Sadat, one of the world’s leading experts on international criminal law, the Genocide Convention has become more of “a monument to the Holocaust” than a tool that can be effectively deployed in court. Still, she says South Africa may prevail in clearing the “very high bar” needed to prove a charge of genocide in court due to the scale of death in Gaza, the extreme rhetoric of top Israeli officials, and Israel’s decision to restrict food and other humanitarian assistance. “A question I have is: Is this a Srebrenica moment?” she says. “And I fear that we may well be looking at exactly that.”

In May, Aryeh Neier, a co-founder of Human Rights Watch, concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza have crossed the line. Neier wrote in the New York Review of Books that he initially refrained from using the term but that the obstruction of aid into Gaza had convinced him: “Israel is engaged in genocide.”

The situation is so grave that, even under the current constrained definition, the judges of the International Court of Justice may eventually agree. In the face of Hamas’ brutal attack and its officials’ repeated calls to annihilate Israel, the Netanyahu government has turned to physical destruction—a technique that Lemkin considered to be the “last and most effective phase of genocide”—at a scale that is unprecedented in its history. More than 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, most of them civilians. The deaths of thousands more Palestinians trapped under the rubble are believed to still be uncounted. A famine has begun. 

Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, is now seeking warrants for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas’ leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. But Israel remains undeterred. In late May, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its assault on Rafah. Days later, the Israeli military used American bombs in a strike on Rafah that killed dozens of civilians. Lemkin saw something like this ineffectiveness of international governance coming.

“Better laws are made by people with greater hearts,” Lemkin wrote about how his original definition of genocide had been undermined in its codification. “They want non­enforceable laws with many loopholes in them, so that they can manage life like currency in a bank.”

Following former President Trump’s first criminal conviction—and his rambling against the outcome—he’s claiming that the possibility of being sentenced to house arrest or jail time doesn’t bother him.

“I’m okay with it,” Trump said on Fox & Friends Weekend, in his first interview since a dozen jurors handed down guilty verdicts on 34 of 34 felony charges for falsifying business records on Thursday.

The Fox & Friends hosts said they spent 90 minutes interviewing the former president at his Bedminster, New Jersey estate. In the 11-minute clip that aired Sunday, Trump ranted and repeated many of his complaints about the case and his political opponents: the people trying to hold him accountable are “deranged,” the trial was “a scam,” President Biden “can’t put two sentences together,” Democrats are “a threat to democracy.” Trump also called the guilty verdict, which he plans to appeal, “tougher on my family than it is for me.”

And, ever the martyr, the former president added that he thinks a sentence of jail or house arrest would throw his adoring public into upheaval. “I’m not sure the public would stand for it,” he said. “I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there’s a breaking point.”

But that remains to be seen. A CBS News/YouGov poll released today found that while 45 percent of respondents thought Trump should not serve prison time for the conviction, 38 percent think he should, with 17 percent unsure. An ABC/Ipsos poll found that half of Americans agree with the verdict—and nearly as many, 49 percent, think Trump should end his presidential campaign because of it.

Meanwhile, top Republicans are privately bracing for the possibility that their presumptive nominee may be incarcerated when the party officially nominates him at July’s Republican National Convention, according to a report on CBS’ Face the Nation. The former president’s sentencing is set for July 11; the four-day RNC kicks off in Milwaukee on July 15.

Some legal experts think Trump’s chances of jail time are slim given his age, 77, and his lack of a criminal record. He could simply be sentenced to probation. But incarceration is certainly possible, especially given Trump’s repeated violations of a gag order barring him from “threatening, inflammatory, denigrating” remarks about witnesses, jurors, court workers, and their families.

One thing is for sure: Jail time wouldn’t stop his campaign. “He is running for president,” Trump’s lawyer, Alina Habba, told the BBC on Sunday. “Nothing will change there.”

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who previously called January 6 rioters “insurrectionists” who “should face the full extent of federal law,” is now singing a different tune: Many of those insurrectionists, he believes, should be “considered” for, and receive, presidential pardons.

On NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, Cotton said people “who did not attack a law enforcement officer, [and] who did not damage public property ” on Jan. 6 should be “considered” for a pardon.

“Anyone who is charged with silly misdemeanors about parading on public grounds without a permit, who did not attack a law enforcement officer, who did not damage public property, their pardon should be considered—in many cases, I would say it should be granted,” Cotton said. (As Meet the Press fill-in host Peter Alexander pointed out, that’s different from Trump’s recent pledge to pardon all of the more than 800 rioters who have been sentenced, whom he has called “hostages” and “political prisoners.”)

The senator went on to insist that he believes the Supreme Court will soon erase the insurrectionists’ convictions anyway, referring to Fischer v. US, the case focused on the Justice Department’s use of the “obstructing an official proceeding” charge against January 6 participants. (As my colleague Dan Friedman wrote, a favorable ruling for the rioters could disrupt the convictions of 350 participants; as Dan also wrote, it’s not clear how the high court will rule in the case, contrary to Cotton’s claims that it’ll be a slam-dunk for the rioters. A decision is expected by the end of the month.)

Cotton’s change of heart over the treatment of the insurrectionists under the law may have something to do with his rumored status as an increasingly attractive contender as Trump’s vice-presidential nominee, according to a New York Times report published last week. The Times report, which cites three anonymous people close to Trump, says the now–convicted felon sees Cotton as disciplined and an effective communicator, and likes the fact that he served in the Army and is a fellow Ivy League graduate.

Another part of his apparent VP audition on Meet the Press this morning came when Cotton—who voted to certify the 2020 election results—said that, while he does not believe that Congress has the authority to reject electors certified by states, he’d only accept this year’s results “if it’s a fair and a free election.”

“Any candidate of any party has a perfect right to pursue legal remedies if they believe there’s been fraud or cheating in an election,” Cotton said. Trump and his allies, of course, made use of this right, filing more than 60 court cases challenging the results of the 2020 contest. All but one failed; the sole legal victory was on a technical matter in Pennsylvania, and would not have changed the election outcome in the state, where Biden won by more than 80,000 votes, according to USA Today.

Other rumored Trump VP contenders have played the same game as Cotton, publicly reversing their previously articulated positions to align with Trump’s, or walking back previous criticisms of him. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) have all gone on television and, in various ways, refused to commit to certifying this year’s election results no matter who wins—even though Scott and Rubio both voted to certify the 2020 results. (Vance was not yet in office in 2020, and has since said he would not have certified the results. Stefanik voted to overturn them.)

But for all his posturing, when this morning’s interview turned to talk about Trump’s VP shortlist, Cotton played coy. “I suspect only he knows who’s on his short list,” Cotton said of Trump. “I have not talked to the president or his campaign about his vice-presidential selection or any position in his administration.”

He added, “Any great patriot, if offered a chance to serve our country by the president, would have to consider it seriously.”

And any aspiring Trump VP, it appears, has to abandon their convictions and fall in line with the ex-president to be seriously considered for the job.

Federal prosecutors went to court last month with what seemed like a slam-dunk case that New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez had accepted bribes to help the governments of Egypt and Qatar while he was the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Prosecutors have the gold bars Menendez supposedly received as a corrupt payment, a cooperating witness, and text messages that, they say, showed the senator promising to take votes and other official actions in exchange for bribes.

But the prosecution is being complicated by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause—or at least by the trial judge’s expansive reading of it. This provision aims to allow lawmakers to avoid legal liability for things they say or do in Congress. The idea is to protect elected representatives from being sued or prosecuted for performing their constitutional duties.

You might assume that this clause—while sensibly protecting lawmakers from things like libel suits or criminal charges over controversial floor speeches—would have a carveout for public corruption cases. It, in fact, does not. Read literally, it appears quite broad. “For any speech or debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned in any other place,” it says.

The feds had argued they could sidestep this provision by avoiding evidence concerning officials acts Menendez took. Instead, they planned to focus on text messages related to his alleged promises to take corrupt actions.

But last week, after the trial was well underway, US District Judge Sidney Stein said he would bar prosecutors from introducing text messages that, they allege, showed the people who bribed Menendez discussing “getting their money’s worth” from the senator.

The government objected furiously, arguing the ruling would allow lawmakers to be all but immune from prosecution for taking bribes in exchange for legislative acts.

The clause is “not designed to make members of Congress super citizens immune from all criminal responsibility,” Assistant US Attorney Paul Monteleoni argued in court.

“It is difficult to see how any gratuity charge could ever be proven if Menendez were correct that such evidence is barred,” prosecutors argued in a motion. But Stein, a Bill Clinton appointee, rejected the government’s request that he reconsider.

Meanwhile, Menendez’s lawyers are working to use the Speech or Debate Clause knock out other evidence prosecutors hope to present. On Friday, the defense asked Stein to bar the government from citing a 2019 email from Menenedez to an alleged conspirator in which Menendez attached the text of a bill he sponsored that would likely have benefited Egypt. The defense said that while his sponsoring the measure was unmentioned in the email, the “implication” of his support meant that introducing it in court would be unconstitutional.

That motion is pending. But so far, the fallout from Menendez’s trial looks (yet again) like good news for lawmakers accused of corruption. Donald Trump, it seems, isn’t the only politician who could soon be essentially immune from prosecution.