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Mulvaney outlined how Trump's legal woes could play out in an opinion piece published in The Hill Wednesday morning.

He described an "outlandish" scenario in which President Joe Biden offers Trump a deal if the former president is convicted. Under that agreement, Biden would pardon Trump in exchange for his dropping out of the presidential race. Biden would then end his 2024 campaign to assure Americans that the deal was not done to make his reelection chances easier.

Mulvaney predicted Trump would ultimately accept that offer. While he said the scenario is not likely to happen, he described how the former president might approach such an offer to avoid serving time in prison.

It's a tense time on the world stage. The U.S. is playing a supporting role in two foreign wars, Ukraine and Gaza, while simultaneously trying to shift its national security focus to the challenges posed by China.

If there were any questions about the role of foreign policy in the Republican primaries, the answers came following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. At the last debate in Miami, Republicans clashed over their support for Israel.

In a November Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll, 57% of likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers said the Israel-Hamas war is "extremely important" to them as they evaluate candidates.

But with all the talk about the Koch Network stepping into the arena on behalf of Nikki Haley, there's been hardly a mention of another big bucks right-wing family coming off of the sidelines for Donald Trump. CNBC reported last week that according to "people familiar with the matter," Bob Mercer and his daughter Rebekah are considering getting back in the game after laying out since 2018. And they've got $88 million sitting in their private nonprofit, the Mercer Family Foundation, just waiting to be spent.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy to review a ruling that set aside a decision of the SEC that the hedge fund manager George Jarkesy committed fraud when he misrepresented his financial position to investors. Based on that finding, the agency barred Jarkesy and his company from certain parts of the investment business, imposed $300,000 in penalties on him, and required him to disgorge unlawful profits of nearly $685,000. What makes this case so extraordinary is not that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit concluded that the SEC’s decision was unconstitutional, but the substance of the three separate grounds it found for doing so. If the lower court ruling is upheld, it would likely make adjudications by most federal agencies (and not just the SEC) a thing of the past. Here’s why.

The legal arguments are complicated, but the consequences of the 5th Circuit’s ruling, if upheld, would be straightforwardly devastating. First, Jarkesy argues that the SEC’s decision must be vacated because the agency sought civil penalties and disgorgement of unlawful gains in an agency proceeding and not in a federal court, where he would be entitled to a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment. The result would be the demise of agency proceedings if any agency―not just the SEC―sought monetary relief except in federal court. Not all agencies have the statutory authority to bring cases in federal court, and if they wanted the right to recover money from a wrongdoer, today’s stalemated Congress would need to act (it won’t). Even agencies that currently have the right to go to court would have to choose between getting full relief in court or settling for an order stopping the unlawful conduct, which they could do in an administrative proceeding. And to the extent that agencies choose the federal court route, those courts would see a significant increase in complex litigation, with no new judges or additional resources.

The Iowa caucuses are seven weeks from today. While AFP Action says it will deploy “the largest grassroots operation in the country and a presence in all fifty states” behind Haley, it’s hard to imagine her beating Trump. It feels like another exercise in political delusion: a powerful mainstream Republican force pretending Trump doesn’t control the party.

There’s also deep irony here. As the major financial and political force behind the reactionary, anti-Obama Tea Party movement, AFP helped create Trump, the man it is now trying to defeat.

According to a Tuesday letter addressed to committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), Biden agreed to testify before the committee on Dec. 13 — as long as the hearing was public. In the letter, Biden’s attorneys quoted Comer’s own demand, issued in November, that given Biden’s “willingness to address this investigation publicly up to this point, we would expect him to be willing to testify before Congress.”

The letter added that open-door proceedings “would prevent selective leaks, manipulated transcripts, doctored exhibits, or one-sided press statements.”

Republicans would not have it. “Hunter Biden is trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else,” Comer wrote in a statement. “That won’t stand with House Republicans.”

There is recent precedent for that sort of perpetual protest candidacy. In 2016, Bernie Sanders didn’t concede defeat until the Democratic convention in late July, even though by every objective standard Hillary Clinton had clinched the nomination in early June. But it was a very close race that was still contested right up until the final primaries. So perhaps a better analogy for a prospective perma-campaign by Christie would be Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign, which fought for delegates — and threatened to disrupt party harmony — months after Mitt Romney had nailed down the nomination.

Most people in West Maui get water from the county’s public water system. But Martin-built developments such as Launiupoko, a community of a few hundred large homes outside of Lāhainā, draw their water from three private utility systems that he controls, siphoning underground aquifers and mountain streams to fill swimming pools and irrigate lawns. More than half of all water used in the Launiupoko subdivision, or around 1.5 million gallons a day, goes toward cosmetic landscaping on lawns, according to state estimates. Just over a quarter is used for drinking and cooking.

The scale of this water usage is stunning: According to state data, Launiupoko Irrigation Company and Launiupoko Water Company deliver a combined average of 5,750 gallons of water daily to each residential customer in Launiupoko, or almost 20 times as much as the average American home. The development has just a few hundred residents, but it uses almost half as much water as the public water system in Lāhainā, which serves 18,000 customers.

Historian Joshua Zeitz wrote on X, "This guy represents California in Congress — one of 9 current states whose territory the US won in part or whole during the Mexican War of 1848."

"These guys spent so much time erasing American history that they forgot to read it," wrote BET host Marc Lamont Hill.

Five former Trump officials and conservative allies told Reuters that even as Trump weighs harsher anti-migrant measures, they are concerned about implementing a new version of the 2018 "zero tolerance" policy that separated thousands of children from their parents at the southwest border.

They said they worry about a repeat of the widespread public backlash provoked by the original policy.

"The family separation that resulted from the zero tolerance caused an uproar in the country," said Tom Homan, a former Trump immigration official who could join a second administration. "The best way to do it, rather than deal with all that chaos that comes with it, is to keep them in a residential center together and have their hearings together."

Now, it's perfectly true that there was never a time in America when everyone just got along beautifully. Our history of racism and xenophobia alone puts the lie to that. But Trump's intolerance truly is ecumenical in that it could be any group, any individual, any foe or (former) friend at any given moment. It's entirely self-serving.

It's making more and more people embrace political violence. The recent American Values Survey from Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) in partnership with the Brookings Institution think tank found that one in three Republicans agree that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country” – up from 15% in 2021. (22% of Independents and 13% of Democrats agree, all numbers having increased since 2021.) The truly frightening number is that among those who believe the Big Lie, 46% believe they may resort to violence, as well as 41% of Trump fans and 41% who buy into the "Great Replacement Theory." 39% of Christian nationalists are ready to take up arms to "save the country." Those numbers represent tens of millions of Americans.

For all of Donald Trump’s rhetorical innovations, personality quirks, and alleged criminal malfeasance, what has made him truly unique as a political figure is how much he has merged fan culture with American politics. It’s not unusual for Americans to idolize presidents—Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama are still actively revered by many—but no other president has inspired the same level of merchandise lines or themed car flags. A MAGA bumper sticker often isn’t simply a statement of loyalty; it’s a cultural signifier of community much like the dancing bear bumper sticker is for a Grateful Dead fan.

Nowhere is this more clear than at Trump’s rallies. He’s turned his campaign events into something that has more in common with a Bruce Springsteen concert than a Harry Truman whistle-stop tour.