Late Monday night, the Supreme Court issued a ruling blocking a lower court's decision to force Wisconsin election officials to extend the deadline for accepting mail-in ballots, as long as they were post-marked by Election Day. This decision to limit ballot access was unsurprising given the conservative majority on the court, but as I noted, Justice Brett Kavanaugh's concurring opinion disturbed many readers because of the views it seemed to express about voting and elections.

But there's a related aspect of Kavanaugh's opinion that has attracted significant attention in addition to its ideological bent. It was, many commentators noted, extraordinarily sloppy for a Supreme Court ruling. The opinion was riddled with errors, embarrassingly so, and some of which even relate to the substance of his argument.

For instance, Kavanaugh wrote:

To be sure, in light of the pandemic, some state legislatures have exercised their Article I, §4, authority over elections and have changed their election rules for the November 2020 election. Of particular relevance here, a few States such as Mississippi no longer require that absentee ballots be received before election day. See, e.g., Miss. Code Ann. §23–15–637 (2020). Other States such as Vermont, by contrast, have decided not to make changes to their ordinary election rules, including to the election-day deadline for receipt of absentee ballots. [emphasis added]

But as Vermont's own secretary of state confirmed, the state had changed its election rules this year. It sent every voter a ballot by the first of October:

That doesn't really change the substance of Kavanaugh's ruling, but it does throw doubt on his understanding of the current environment and shed light on his lackluster fact-checking.

Another mistake from Kavanaugh, though, really is important to his argument. He wrote of the reasons that states have for limiting the deadline for absentee ballot returns to Election Day itself:

States want to avoid the chaos and suspicions of impropriety that can ensue if thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election. And those States also want to be able to definitively announce the results of the election on election night, or as soon as possible thereafter. Moreover, particularly in a Presidential election, counting all the votes quickly can help the State promptly resolve any disputes, address any need for recounts, and begin the process of canvassing and certifying the election results in an expeditious manner. See 3 U. S. C. §5. The States are aware of the risks described by Professor Pildes: "[L]ate-arriving ballots open up one of the greatest risks of what might, in our era of hyperpolarized political parties and existential politics, destabilize the election result. If the apparent winner the morning after the election ends up losing due to late-arriving ballots, charges of a rigged election could explode."

But Kavanaugh's quote here from Professor Richard Pildes in The University of Chicago Law Review Online is extremely misleading. Pildes argued in the article cited for the opposite outcome. He urged that states extend deadlines for receiving ballots past Election Day:

States that require absentees to be received by election night or shortly after should move this date back. Even if this fall the same percentage of absentee ballots as in normal elections would be rejected for coming in too late, the same point noted above holds true: a 3 percent rejection rate risks undermining the perceived legitimacy of the election if 70 percent of the vote is cast by absentee ballot. And this problem would be compounded, of course, if mailing back ballots five days before the election is normally sufficient to get them back in time, but not this year. The overall burden on the U.S. Postal Service makes that five-day figure less realistic this time around. Moreover, if a significant number of votes come in after a receipt deadline that has not been changed and that is much tighter than in other states, ex post litigation challenging that deadline is easy to imagine. This is exactly what we do not want to face for a risk that can be mitigated in advance.

Now, Pildes' argument here isn't on exactly the same topic as the question before the court. But it's disingenuous for Kavanaugh to present him as if his argument supported the Supreme Court's decision. Pildes did agree that a long vote count could undermine trust in the election, but he also said that cutting off the deadline by Election Day also "risks undermining the perceived legitimacy of the election." It was dishonest and alarming for Kavanaugh not to acknowledge that the risks cut both ways, especially since the president that appointed him has been trying to discredit mail-in ballots.

Pildes added:

In Wisconsin's election, the federal court pushed the date back six days. But that was for a presidential primary. In the general election, participation rates will be much higher. In choosing an updated receipt deadline that anticipates a dramatic rise in mailed-in ballots, policymakers face a trade-off. The longer the permitted time, the more ballots will be valid. But the longer that time, the longer it will take for the final result to be known. If we thought voters would be patient, that would not pose any risk. But in our climate of existential politics—with partisans all too prepared to believe or charge that elections are being manipulated, and a social-media environment poised to heap fuel onto the fire—the longer after Election Day any significant changes in vote totals take place, the greater the risk that the losing side will cry that the election has been stolen.

Election administrators in different states must weigh in on whether, in their circumstances, a six-day deadline post-election is appropriate, as the federal district court held for Wisconsin. The National Vote at Home Institute, one of the leading advocacy organizations for absentee and mail-in voting, suggests the deadline should be three business days after the election, which seems unduly short under our new circumstances. But state legislatures and election officials need to start facing this issue soon.

Others picked up on another error in the section of Kavanaugh's opinion cited above. He warned about a situation in which "thousands of absentee ballots flow in after election day and potentially flip the results of an election" [emphasis added]. But this is completely wrong. Additional ballots don't flip the "results" of an election because there are no results until all the legitimate votes are counted. Kavanaugh surely knows this, because he worked on the Republican side in Bush v. Gore, which was an extensive argument about the counting of ballots after Election Day in Florida. There was no result until the election was certified. States don't typically "definitively announce the results of the election on election night," either, as Kavanaugh claimed. The media, of course, makes projections about what the final vote will be prior to certification, but that's not the same — as we learned in 2000 when the media incorrectly projected the Florida results. It's rhetoric like Kavanaugh's that truly serves to undermine the legitimacy of this process, rather than extensions of deadlines.

Kavanaugh's argument also incorrectly claimed that the the desire to obtain a quick election result was the Wisconsin legislator's reason for not extending the mail-in ballot deadline. But as Talking Points Memo reporter Tierney Sneed pointed out, this is clearly not so. Otherwise, Wisconsin would have permitted mail-in ballots that were received prior to Election day to be counted ahead of time, making the final count much more efficient. It has not done so, which likely means the ballot counting will extend past Election Night.

Despite Kavanaugh's claim, it's more plausible that the Republican-dominated Wisconsin legislature doesn't want to receive late mail-in ballots because they think those votes will advantage Democrats.

Election law expert Rick Hasen pointed to another error in Kavanaugh's opinion in a piece for the Washington Post, pointing to an incorrect citation of precedent:

Kavanaugh cited a case that came to the Supreme Court during the disputed 2000 presidential election before Bush v. Gore — Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board — as standing for the proposition that state legislatures have this power — negating the power of state courts to expand voting rights under state constitutional provisions that protect the right to vote. As law professor Justin Levitt pointed out, though, Kavanaugh was wrong: The Supreme Court in the Palm Beach case unanimously raised but did not resolve that question. Kavanaugh further embraced this theory as advanced again by then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Bush v. Gore itself, but that was an opinion joined only by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

At another point in the opinion, Kavanaugh tried a clever argument to suggest that no matter the deadline that is set, some voters will miss it:

But moving a deadline would not prevent ballots from arriving after the newly minted deadline any more than moving first base would mean no more close plays. And more to the point, the fact that some ballots will be late in any system with deadlines does not make Wisconsin's widely used deadline facially unconstitutional.

This is true, but Kavanaugh seems to misunderstand the difference between a deadline for sending a ballot and the deadline for receiving it. Extending the deadline for receiving the ballot give more grace to voters for a consideration that is out of their hands: how quickly the postal service can deliver ballots. That's how many such deadlines work; for example, you only need to send your taxes into the government by April 15 — it doesn't need to receive them by that date. Kavanaugh's failure to notice the difference in this analogy is telling.

It's notable that, in all the tumult controversy that surrounded Kavanaugh's confirmation to the Supreme Court, many people told us that — whatever his personal faults — he was an excellent and upstanding jurist. This latest opinion gives us reason to question that conclusion.

Hasen, in particular, seemed disturbed by this turn of events.

"Why was Justice Kavanaugh so sloppy with the facts and law here (and presumably in the earlier Wisconsin election per curiam)?" he asked on Twitter. "He is usually a careful writer. It just undermines his points. A huge, unforced error."

The errors and sloppiness reflect another sad fact about the court: There's little we can do to encourage good behavior among Supreme Court justices. Short of impeachment or expansion of the court — either of which would be heavy lifts, though they're possible — there are few ways to limit their power. That means Kavanaugh can write sloppy and erroneous opinions on the bench with little fear it will cost him.

Even if November 3 brings a major blue wave, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, according to recent polls, is likely to be reelected. McConnell is seeking a seventh term, but veteran progressive activist Ralph Nader, in an op-ed for the Louisville Courier, argues that the last thing the Kentucky senator deserves is to be reelected.

"I have studied and interacted with many members of Congress," Nader writes. "McConnell is the most brazen evil, cruel and powerful legislator in the last 50 years. His lack of empathy for the vulnerable and disadvantaged is stunning."

McConnell's record, Nader stresses, has been characterized by a total lack of compassion for those less fortunate than him. And he hasn't grown any more compassionate under Donald Trump's presidency.

"McConnell, comfortably embraced by the Congress' socialized medicine, loses no sleep saying yes to a corporate-profit-glutted, wasteful corporatized health care industry whose denials, co-payments and exemptions are costing thousands of uninsured and insured American lives a year. He fought but failed to end Obamacare, pleased to consign another 22 million people to the dreaded, uninsured hell," Nader writes, adding that he has vigorously fought against relief for Americans who are hurting financially because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to Nader, "McConnell's back-of-the-hand to coal mine workers' safety, survivors' pensions and continuing black lung payments, mainly harms Kentucky, but his other aggressions against people in favor of big business affect the entire country. He bragged at an event in Owensboro that he and he alone decides what issues this Senate votes on."

McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984. This year, his latest Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, was hoping to unseat him. But McConnell appears heading for reelection.

"McConnell has the gall to campaign on 'Kentucky Values,'" Nader writes. "Voters in Kentucky, with a little homework, or a factual memory of this senatorial oligarch, shouldn't have difficulty in rejecting those claims. McConnell has gotten away with ferociously shredding Kentucky values for 36 years. He smugly expects six more years."

Conservative attorney George Conway, one of President Donald Trump's most vehement critics on the right, typically uses intellectual arguments when slamming the president — often referencing the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution. But occasionally, he uses blistering humor instead. And in a parody op-ed for the Washington Post, Conway mocks Trump supporters mercilessly.

Conway's op-ed is headlined, "I Believe In the President, Now More Than Ever," and he lists a variety of reasons to reelect Trump next week on November 3. The reasons Conway lists are absurd, which is exactly the point: the conservative attorney is using humor to show how asinine pro-Trump arguments can be.

Conway's "pro-Trump" arguments are hilarious — for example, "I believe Sleepy Joe Biden and that 'monster' Kamala D. Harris would turn America into a 'socialist hellhole,' and we'd all have 'to speak Chinese.' I believe they 'want to take out the cows' and 'any form of animals.' There will be 'no airplanes,' they'll 'rip down the Empire State Building,' and we'll only have 'little, tiny windows.'"

Other gems range from "I believe Hunter Biden is a criminal, because someone got hold of his 'laptop from hell'" to "I believe the president is the 'least racist person' in any room he's in. I believe it was fine for him to tell the Proud Boys to 'stand by,' because 'somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left.' I believe 'corona' sounds like a 'beautiful seaside island in Italy,' and so, we must say 'China plague.'"

The Never Trump attorney slams conspiracy theories on Hunter Biden, writing, "I believe the laptop didn't come from Russian intelligence. I believe Hunter Biden flew from his home in Los Angeles to Philadelphia, and then took a train to Delaware, because he needed a legally blind repairman there to fix his laptop. I believe Rudy Giuliani when he says the odds are 'no better than 50/50' he worked with a Russian agent to dig up dirt on the Bidens."

"I believe Harris is 'nasty,' a 'communist' and a 'madwoman,'" Conway continued. "I believe we can't have 'a socialist president — especially a female socialist president.' I believe she has a funny name, and it's possible 'she doesn't meet the requirements' for the vice presidency because her parents were born abroad."

Conway wraps up his parody piece with a recommendation that Trump leave the United States.

"I believe that if the president somehow does lose, he might 'have to leave the country,'" Conway writes. "I believe he probably should."

It was July 2017, a few weeks before the "Unite the Right" Charlottesville riots, when white men marched through the streets of that Virginia city protesting the planned takedown of a confederate statue and chanting, "Jews will not replace us." I was sitting at a coffee shop in my quiet town of Poulsbo in Washington State. I had set aside an hour away from my kids to do some necessary writing, while my husband, then second-in-command on a Navy ballistic missile submarine, sat suspended somewhere in the depths of the Pacific Ocean.

Our toddler and infant were home with a babysitter, offering me a rare chance to write, peacefully, amid the stressors of my life. I had a clinical social-work internship then, counseling war-traumatized veterans, and had spent months single-mothering while my spouse was at sea. To my surprise, I was suddenly jolted from my daydreams by chanting men. Glancing out the window at the usually placid waterfront of our town, I caught sight of a group of surprisingly large white men wearing animal skin loincloths, vests, and horned hats. They were also holding torches and -- I kid you not -- spears. They were loudly chanting, "Poulsbo! Poulsbo! Poulsbo!" And that was when I suddenly remembered that this was our annual Viking Fest in which groups of Washington residents from near and far celebrated the town's Norwegian founders.

Cars parked more than a mile down our modest streets suggested that such gatherings were anything but local. This would be my second Viking Fest and I would be struck once again by how little I learned about how the town was actually founded, the values it stood for, and which of them might have survived to today. Poulsbo, after all, now existed in a largely militarized area, including a local submarine base, with white, privileged officer families -- those fortunate enough, at least, to be dual-income ones like mine or have trust funds -- purchasing and reselling homes every few years as the U.S. military moved them around the country and the world.

Even in 2017, longtime residents were starting to move away to escape the smoke that snaked into the community earlier each year from ever-fiercer wildfires in ever-longer fire seasons, part of our new climate-changed reality. Meanwhile, Poulsbo's picturesque gingerbread house-style buildings were being replaced by larger condo complexes, as developers moved ever deeper into the town's hillside forests that would undoubtedly someday burn.

Viking Fest, with its spectacle of white men banging spears and shouting aggressively, set my heart racing with an unnamed fear. It was, after all, a moment when the recently elected Donald Trump was already demonstrating that practically no behavior, including in Charlottesville soon ("You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides"), should be considered beyond bounds. Later, talking with another military wife, a rare woman of color visiting that town, about the Viking shout-a-thon, amid an almost all-white crowd of officers and their families watching the event, she said, "It's like there's no point. It's like a celebration of white people!"

Who Are They and What Do They Stand For?

Looking back now, it's hard not to see that evening's loud and prideful display of white masculinity, which merely disturbed the peace for stressed-out moms like me, as a harbinger of more sinister things to come. Shouting male nationalist groups like the Proud Boys that President Trump told to "stand by" at his first debate with Joe Biden and the Wolverine Watchmen, some of whom have allegedly been linked to a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, are increasingly commonplace in the news.

As a military wife who has made five different moves over the last 10 years, I'm particularly aware of how racially and ethnically diverse this country and its military actually are. Under the circumstances, it's remarkable that much of white America lacks any understanding of just how threatening displays like Viking Fest must look to the rare person of color who happens upon them.

It should certainly be obvious in October 2020 how destructive to our democracy fraternal, pro-Trump groups have become during Donald Trump's presidency. Take those Proud Boys. Among the founding principles their website offers are a vague set of notions that include "reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism," "anti-political correctness," "venerating the housewife," "pro-gun rights" (in a pandemic-ridden country where, between March and July alone, an estimated three million more guns were purchased than usual), and -- get this -- "anti-racism." For the Proud Boys to say that they reject racism and venerate housewives did little more than provide them with a veneer of social acceptability, even as they planned armed counter-rallies in progressive cities like Providence and Portland with the explicit purpose of inciting violence among Black Lives Matter protesters and their allies.

Other influences, like the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, are even more direct. For example, that site urged its followers to cyber-bully American University's first black female student government president, Taylor Dumpson after nooses began appearing on that school's campus in 2017. In April 2016, its founder Andrew Anglin had written, "Jews, Blacks, and lesbians will be leaving America if Trump gets elected -- and he's happy about it. This alone is enough reason to put your entire heart and soul into supporting this man."

One thing is certain: all that matters as markers of humanity to the man who inspires and, however implicitly, endorses such groups, President Donald Trump, is white skin and political support. The other night at his town hall with NBC's Savannah Guthrie, a would-be supporter presented herself as the granddaughter of immigrants who had fled religious persecution in Eastern Europe. She asked the president about his plans to protect DACA recipients from having to return to their countries. The president responded: "DACA is somewhat different from Dreamers. You understand that... Where do you come from, by the way, originally? Where?" After the woman responded that her grandparents came from Russia and Poland, he stated, "That's very good." He then went on to discuss his border wall with Mexico; that is, keeping the wrong kind of immigrants out.

The Military as a Recruiting Ground for the Far Right

If there is any concept that these groups threatening to disrupt our democracy stand for, it's a version of individual freedom -- like not wearing masks -- that's akin to driving drunk and without putting on a seat belt, rather than waiting for a sober friend to drive you home. Yes, it's more comfortable not to wear a mask or a seatbelt. The short-term benefits, like physical comfort, are tangible, as is perhaps the exhilarating sense that you can do anything you want with your body. (Ask most anti-maskers about abortion rights, however, and you'll get quite a different perspective on the degree to which our bodies should be our own.)

Yet the most current scientific evidence is that if all Americans wore masks (and social-distanced) right now, it would potentially save tens of thousands of lives. In the age of Covid-19, however, concerns over public health restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus, including lockdowns of gyms, bars, and other public facilities, have become political firestorms. Such mandated lockdowns were the main reason various gunmen collaborated with the Wolverine Watchmen in a plot -- fortunately foiled -- to kidnap the governor of Michigan and considered a similar plot against Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia.

Perhaps not coincidentally, people of color -- Blacks and Latinos -- die from Covid-19 at a rate about a third higher than their share of the population. In other words, it couldn't be clearer whose bodily freedoms are really considered at stake in these far-right struggles and whose are expendable.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these groups is that they take a significant part of their manpower and know-how from the United States military with the tacit support of a Republican Senate. As a military spouse as well as the co-founder of Brown University's Costs of War Project, it's been no secret to me that our military's support for bigotry of all kinds is endemic. Racist and sexist remarks are commonplace both on the boats where my husband has served and in gatherings with officer colleagues and their families. Little more than brief reprimands (if that) are handed out in return.

In a country where gun ownership and firearms training are seen by the far right as inalienable, all-American freedoms, the military is a ripe breeding ground for disaffected men looking for individual empowerment, a sense of belonging, and just such training. In fact, a recent New York Times investigation claims that veterans and active-duty military members make up more than a fifth of the membership of America's 300 anti-government, pro-Trump "militia" groups. According to a 2019 survey by the Military Times, about a quarter of active-duty service members reported witnessing signs of white nationalist ideology among their fellow soldiers, including racist and anti-Semitic slurs and homemade explosives shaped like swastikas.

Nothing is more disturbing, when it comes to white nationalist-style hate, than the way the Republicans in Congress have implicitly sanctioned it. In 2019, after the Democratic-controlled House introduced a clause into the Defense Authorization Act to have recruits screened for white nationalist ideology, the Republican Senate nixed the provision. What more need be said?

How did an institution that should be about service to the nation become a petri dish for people who stand for nothing of collective significance? Even one of the favorite and abiding principles of far-right actors (and many Republicans in Congress), the right to bear arms, seems eerily decontextualized from history in a country that leads the world by far in armed citizens (many with distinctly military-style weaponry).

Let's remember that this right was grounded in the idea of organizing the revolutionary army against a colonial power that taxed people without representing them and forcibly billeted its military in their homes. The colonists, while rife with their own history of human-rights violations, were not a bunch of disaffected, irrationally angry individual crusaders with an urge to use weapons to threaten civilians.

Two and a half centuries later, the party that regularly signals its support for the far right's armed tactics still controls the presidency, the upper chamber of Congress, and will soon control the Supreme Court as well. And yet it and its right-wing supporters eternally act as if they were the victims in our world and, from that position of victimization, are now threatening others (and not just Gretchen Whitmer either.)

Many among them still see themselves as subjugated by this country's ruling elite, which may represent a kind of projection or, psychologically speaking, seeing in others the thoughts and feelings one actually harbors in oneself. And as a therapist who has worked with significant numbers of veterans and military service members, I can warn them: don't do it. As I know from some military service members who have told me of their time in distant lands, when they used guns against civilians, it shook to the core their belief in the principle of service to country, leaving them distrustful of the homeland they had been fighting for.

Of course, an increasingly armed far right has responded by creating a world of symbols that are deeply comforting to them. Yet do they really stand for anything?

I was recently appalled by a bumper sticker on a minivan featuring two large guns and three smaller ones aligned together like those stickers that show heterosexual nuclear families. Its tagline: "My guns are my family." At the wheel was a young woman with several children. I balk similarly at pictures on people's lawns that feature Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" flag -- how did he get a separate flag? -- and the word "Jesus" in all-capital letters.

Guns and small children? A separate Trump state and Jesus? Never before has sociologist Émile Durkheim's idea that religious groups are less in need of a cohesive ideology than symbols to which they can all bow down in unison made more sense to me. Amid such incoherence (and symbolic violence), such an inability to justify their place in this democracy, it might be fairest to say that, as this election campaign heads toward its chaotic climax, Trump and the far right worship little more than one another.

"At Least He Hasn't Started Another War"

In October, the United States passed its 19-year mark in its second Afghan War of the last four decades. In many ways, that war and the dregs of the conflict in Iraq, which the U.S. invaded in the spring of 2003, have become as empty as the war that far-right groups wage in the United States. The hundreds of thousands of dead civilians, the flourishing of terrorist groups far deadlier and angrier than those the U.S. originally sought to defeat, the degradation of basic human rights including the rights to life and health -- the carnage has been significant indeed. As these wars enter or near their third decade, I often hear friends say about President Trump, "At least he hasn't started another war."

Oh, but he has! This time, though, the war is at home. Even the Wolverine Watchmen and their co-collaborators in recent kidnapping plots saw themselves as initiating a civil war, or a boogaloo (to use far-right terminology). Not since the Jim Crow South years have we had to worry about people's physical safety as they approach the polls to cast their vote -- and the "Four More Years" folks and other gun-toting Trump supporters have, I fear, just gotten started. Never would it have been thinkable for a sitting president to overlook, or even implicitly endorse, plots to kidnap and possibly kill elected officials, but Trump has even gone so far as to respond to his supporters at a recent rally in Michigan chanting "Lock her up!" by saying "Lock them all up!" (a play both on his Hillary Clinton chants in the last election and on Governor Whitmer's pandemic lockdown orders).

Twenty years later, our healthcare resources (never sufficient) are further depleted. A pandemic is again spiking across the country. Those who run for office and try to govern with dignity are being challenged in all too threatening ways. Think of it, whether in political or health terms, as our new war zone. I hope that those who appear to vote in person under pandemic conditions and increasing threats of voter intimidation will not come under attack next by far-right groups. To anyone who is listening in elected office anywhere in America: I hope you have a plan for a peaceful transition of power, since the "law-and-order" president is, of course, anything but that when it comes to sustaining our democracy, rather than his presidency.

Andrea Mazzarino, a TomDispatch regular, co-founded Brown University's Costs of War Project. She has held various clinical, research, and advocacy positions, including at a Veterans Affairs PTSD Outpatient Clinic, with Human Rights Watch, and at a community mental health agency. She is the co-editor of War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer's new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Copyright 2020 Andrea Mazzarino

Renea Turner protested Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's COVID-19 orders earlier this summer, and this week declared she was making a citizen's arrest, but denies plotting to kidnap him.

Citizen's arrests are all the rage among right-wing extremists these days, it seems. Barely two weeks after 14 Michigan militiamen were arrested as part of a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer under the rubric of a "constitutionalist" fantasy, a similar plot to make a "citizen's arrest" of Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine—accused similarly of "tyranny" by imposing coronavirus-related health measures—bubbled to the surface this week.

The alleged Ohio plot revolves around a fringe-right activist named Renea Turner, who ran a write-in campaign for governor in 2018. A man who worked with her told police that Turner had attempted to join her plan to perform a citizen's arrest of DeWine at his home—which he claims involved then trying him for treason and punishing him accordingly.

On Thursday, Turner conducted a ceremony in Columbus (posted as a since-deleted video on Facebook) in which she announced that she was deposing DeWine as governor, and took the gubernatorial oath to replace him. On Monday, she held a press conference in which she denied she intended to harm DeWine—she merely intended to serve him with citizen's arrest papers, she said.

The idea of using citizen's arrest powers against government officials engaged in the far right's conception of "treason" and "tyranny" has its origins in the "Patriot" militia movement's activism in the 1990s. It was a common strategy for so-called "constitutionalists" and "sovereign citizens" to file reams of documents containing flowery pseudo-legal language to claim that various government officials—including judges, prosecutors, and elected authorities—had betrayed their oaths of office and thus committed treason.

Some, such as the Freemen in eastern Montana, issued bounties of $1 million for the arrest of various public officials on charges of treason. These tactics, in the Freemen's case, grew so egregious—along with the fraud the group committed among local businesses—that eventually the FBI began to arrest its members, culminating in an 81-day armed standoff near Jordan in 1996.

The tactic largely fell into disuse during the first decade of the 21^st century. However, its apparent revival among far-right extremists illustrates how deep the connection to old "Patriot" belief systems and strategies among current-day radicals really runs.

x

At her Thursday ceremony, Turner read a long-winded declaration (which she also posted on Facebook) to "alter and remove" DeWine, a Republican, as governor. "Mike DeWine has used his position; he has become so corrupt that he has oppressed the people," her statement read. "Governor Mike DeWine has become concentrated, grown and has become a Tyrant and will be held accountable immediately. He will receive a Tyrant's punishment."

Turner's language was different from that preferred by sovereign citizens—she refers to herself throughout it as "one people"—but conceptually her declaration was identical to that made by the 1990s "Patriots." This included the apparent belief that the same "one people" who arrest the governor are automatically slotted to replace him.

Afterward, she took the oath of office as governor of Ohio with the assistance of several supporters, one of whom was a notary public, and it was signed by several of the supporters as witnesses.

"This is a huge step for America," she said afterward. "This is just getting started with Ohio. We have figured out a way to save America and we are starting it today."

One of those witnesses—a man who Turner and her contingent referred to as "Wild Man"—wore a jacket declaring himself a "Patriot" and a member of the "III Percent" militia movement.

The man who reported that Turner was planning to arrest DeWine told police that Turner, a Springfield native, had called him at his home the morning of Oct. 16 and asked if he wanted to participate in arresting the governor at DeWine's home later that weekend and try him for allegations of tyranny before a "citizens court." He also said that Turner had suggested two penalties for conviction: permanent exile or execution.

He said that while he agreed that DeWine should be arrested, he expected the process to occur under established law enforcement authorities. He had hoped the group of DeWine critics could find a prosecutor who would charge him.

"(The caller) said 'no, we the people, we're going to arrest him,'" the source said.

"Do I think (DeWine) needs to be arrested? Absolutely," the man said. "But all that needs to happen within the confines of the law."

Turner told cleveland.com that she had participated in the call, but insisted that she had only discussed placing DeWine under house arrest, and made no specific plans to do so. She dismissed the man's claims: "He's a dingbat," she said.

The Ohio Capital Journal reported that a state representative said he recently met with Turner prior to the alleged call, and that she had inquired about the governor's home. Ohio State Police say they are investigating the matter, but Turner has not been detained.

DeWine commented on Friday about the plot: "At this point in my life, nothing shocks me anymore," he said. "We're going to continue to do what we need to do every day. Our life goes on and I'm going to do what I need to do. I don't know the details of the so-called plan. I can't really comment about that. As I said in regard to what happened with Governor Whitmer, it's despicable anyone would want to in any way go around our legal process that we have. We are a country, a state, a rule of law, we have a long tradition of that and anybody that wants to violate that or go around that, we all have a responsibility to denounce."

Ohio law on citizen's arrests permits them in only limited circumstances. There first has to be a reasonable belief—one based on real and not imaginary or theoretical evidence—that the arrestee committed a felony. You also can only detain a suspect until the police can furnish an arrest warrant; if there isn't a law enforcement officer, you have to transport the person to a court or judge who can make the determination.

An Ohio sheriff explained: "Felonies are capital offenses and a reasonable person would know. J-walking, littering are misdemeanor violations. A citizen would not have the right to engage themselves in something of that nature, but that certainly shouldn't deter them from reporting a crime."

The viability of citizen's arrests for broader uses such as Turner's, or the Michigan militiamen who appear to be planning a legal defense around the claim that they only planned to perform such an arrest of Whitmer, has never been recognized by any court or legal jurisdiction.

Attorney Sarissa Montague of Kalamazoo explained to mlive.com that in order for defendants in the Michigan case to claim they were making a citizen's arrest, they'd have to prove "that a felony actually had been committed and that any reasonable person acting without passion or prejudice would have fairly suspected" the same.

There was another citizen's arrest incident in Michigan recently involving a city councilman in Warren who attempted to make an arrest of his own. Eddie Kabacinski, a Trump supporter who at an April council meeting had donned a gas mask to mock anti-pandemic measures, is currently under investigation for having slapped a pair of handcuffs onto a protester who showed up at a Trump rally Oct. 14 in Eastpointe.

The woman had stuck three small Black Lives Matter stickers on Trump signs placed along the boulevard. Kabacinski chased her and grabbed her, at which point she sprayed him with silly string. The councilman—who carries the handcuffs regularly—pulled them out and put them on the woman with her hands behind her back until officers arrived. Eastpointe officers promptly removed the cuffs and released the woman.

"Putting a decal sticker over a Trump sign, and it says Black Lives Matter, you are promoting a domestic terrorist organization on a Trump sign and that's not good," he told a local weekly newspaper. "That's not the image that the Trump campaign or the Republican Party is trying to convey. We are trying to get back to law and order in this country."

Kabacinski's behavior in other situations is also under fire. After the home of a Black family in his council district was attacked three times—rocks through windows, tires slashed, a Black Lives Matter sign shot up with a gun—he had shown up as a counterprotester at a Sept. 19 event intended to voice support for the family, dressed in military fatigues with a gun on his hip, carrying a large Trump flag.

Most of the time, however, the threats of a citizen's arrest as a far-right tactic have been directed at public officials—and the intent has always been clear, too. In Montana in the 1990s, the judges who were threatened with it identified the issue clearly.

"Terrorism is what it is," said Marty Bethel, a city judge in the town of Hamilton who had faced an "arrest" threat unless she dismissed a traffic charge against a member of a local militia. "I hope someone takes this seriously, before blood is shed. If you let these people walk up one side and down the other, all you've done is empower them."

Clinical psychologist Dr. Alan Blotcky, Ph.D. spoke to Raw Story Tuesday to walk through what he thinks voters will see from President Donald Trump in the upcoming week ahead of the election.

While Dr. Blotcky isn't part of the "Duty To Warn" movement, he does support it and he explained how mental health experts have been able to diagnose the president without ever having him sit in their offices.

"The most important information that a mental health professional can get is observable behavior," he explained. "It's not just his observable behavior we have access to. We have thousands of examples of his tweets, of his statements, of his interviews, his audios, his videos. So, we have many years of his accumulated information directly from him both verbally and behaviorally. Yes, we don't get to meet with him in our office in a one-on-one session. And that's important because that would give us even more information into his thinking and feeling. But having access to vast amounts of verbal statements and behaviors is crucial."

Dr. Blotcky explained that Trump is "so obviously impaired and so obviously disordered" that it would even be difficult to find a mental health professional who wouldn't agree with that assessment after four years in office.

For anyone who thinks Trump is merely playing the role of an angry politician, he explained that throughout Trump's life, he's been consistent in his narcissism.

"If you look at the whole of his life it's very consistent," he said. "It's outlandish to think this is just an act. This is him."

As Trump goes into the final week of his campaign, Dr. Blotcky anticipates seeing more desperation from Trump. He thinks that Trump will bring more "wild accusations, conspiracy theories and threats." It has become clear that the president is reverting to what worked for him in 2016, "his old bag of tricks," as Dr. Blotcky described it. The only difference is that this time around, it not only isn't working to move the needle, but his multi-rally strategy is also serving as superspreader events.

"I think he's going to throw out any outlandish things he can think of, hoping that something will stick," said the psychologist.

In a normal campaign, the candidate would be pivoting to something that actually works to expand their base of support. Trump is sticking with his existing supporters, even if that means he won't have enough of them next Tuesday.

"That's why he always doubles down, triples-down, quadruples-down," said. Dr. Blotcky. "He can't [change] because to change would be a sign of weakness or failure. And he always thinks he's right. He thinks he's the smartest person on the planet. He thinks he knows more than the experts. He thinks he knows more than the scientists. And so, what he thinks automatically becomes the prevailing strategy on his part and he can't pivot. He's incapable of pivoting. I think it comes from his psychiatric disorder. I think he is so grandiose and so self-absorbed that he can't see outside himself. And I don't even think he understands that he needs to pivot because I think he thinks he's right. And if he's right, there's nothing to talk about."

For the every-day self-aware person who is capable of being insightful and psychologically minded, that level of delusion isn't an option.

"I think until recently he has thought of himself as unstoppable," said Dr. Blotcky. "And I think he still thinks he's unstoppable. I think he thinks he's going to pull it out in the end just like he did in 2016 and if he can get it to the courts his new Supreme Court Justice will help tip the scales."

If Trump loses, Dr. Blotcky thinks he will play the victim card, allege the election was rigged, there is a conspiracy against him and that mail-in votes shouldn't even be counted.

"I think he's going to turn to his attorney general to try and get him to begin some actions," he continued. "I think he's going to try and take it to the courts and I think he's going to try to give the message to his supporters all around the country that he is the victim, that he is aggrieved, and that they need to support him in his victimhood."

For Trump's supporters, even those who held their noses and voted for him four years ago, Trump has been able to tap in them a kind of grievance that they have been ignored by politicians.

"They believe in him because they feel aggrieved," said Dr. Blotcky. "They feel like the political system has left them behind. They feel like victims. So, I think they identify with him and I think they like chaos. They like the rebelliousness of this president. They want to turn the political system upside down because they feel like the system has hurt them. So, he is kind of their supreme leader as far as wreaking havoc in the political system. When he says ridiculous things, they cheer him on because he's expressing their own pent-up frustrations and feelings our system has left them behind and have hurt them."

One of Trump's greatest accomplishments has been in fearmongering and painting former Vice President Joe Biden as a socialist to people who don't know what that even means has been a successful tactic. It's one that the GOP has employed for years, but such an accusation isn't as effective as people understand American socialist programs like Medicare, the interstate system and public schools.

"What he's been successful at is selling the idea that Joe Biden and the Democrats are socialists and they're going to change your neighborhood and that your way of life is going to be vastly different," said Dr. Blocky. "I think there's a group of Republicans that buy that. I know some people that buy that."

Trump's claim that somehow neighborhoods are going to become chaos-driven riot-zones is a "fabrication," he said, but "fearmongering works."

It is possible to bring those people back from that, but Dr. Blotcky says it will come with Biden including them as part of his new administration.

"If you cut off the head, which is Trump, I think there is going to be residual stuff, but I think if Joe Biden keeps talking about being the president for all Americans, and not just Democrats, that's the strategy. That's the attitude you have to have — that our new president has to be the president for all of us, and they have to listen to him," Dr. Blotcky went on. "A lot of his supporters, I see them in the crowds, are people who really have been left behind by this economy and they feel like they are not listened to or valued. And I think one of the major functions of the president is to listen to everybody and have everybody feel like we're a part of what we're trying to do in this democracy."

In the immediate aftermath, Dr. Blotcky agrees that the Trump supporters will still take to the streets and that there will be violence, but that Biden will have the capacity to calm the nation much more so than Trump.

"If [Trump] gets agitated and riled up, you're going to see a lot of his supporters get agitated and riled up," he explained.

In an interview Monday, Cindy, a self-described Republican evangelical explained that her children were kind and thoughtful in how they spoke to her about the election and helped her walk through options because she didn't like Trump, but still had conservative issues she was dedicated to. Dr. Blotcky agreed that the soft and kind way of speaking to Trump supporters is the best way to help move them. For some, he acknowledged that it's never going to work, but for those who are looking for other options in the final week of the election, it's the best way to persuade. No one moves voters by screaming "you're wrong!" at them.

As the U.S. goes into the holiday season, he explained that's the best way to get through with your families. Yelling and screaming over politics never persuades anyone.

Dr. Blotcky closed by reinforcing that what Trump has done to diminish the dangers of the coronavirus has been reckless and criminal.

"Donald Trump has made the decision that losing American lives is fine. Our very lives have become unimportant, ignorable, even forgettable to him," he wrote for AL.com in May.

With Election Day less than one week away, anxiety is rising as the American public braces for the November 3 outcome. As Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden campaigns with social distancing in mind, President Donald Trump is still running amok as he continues to spread misinformation in an effort to sow seeds to doubt if the election outcome is not favorable for him.

Sadly, reports now suggest that right-wing misinformation could "pick up steam" after the election. Although the rise of right-wing misinformation accelerated after Trump's 2016 win, Axios reports that this type of potentially harmful rhetoric will likely continue whether the president wins or loses his bid for re-election.

Researchers with the the Harvard Kennedy School and the London School of Economics have indicated that the "economic incentives governing the internet and the information ecosystem broadly, have created a environment that actors, particularly on the right, will easily exploit with disinformation."

In a new Harvard publication, Dipayan Ghosh, Ph.D., a senior researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School, along with Nick Couldry, who works as a media and social theory professor at the London School of Economics, both insist right-wing misinformation will continue to circulate because such information spreads easily.

"Right now, there's a whole lot of people on the right whose view of how to gain influence does have an unusual relationship with truth," says Couldry. "They are quite happy to spread misinformation, because it's more effective."

He added, "That plays into the fact that the business models of internet companies don't differentiate between the type of actor and whether it is incentivized to tell the truth or not."

Investigative findings also support the researchers' theory. More than three dozen Facebook groups have been identified as "super spreaders" of right-wing misinformation. Nearly 40 right-wing pages reportedly focus on "spewing this type of misinformation leans right or is affiliated with right-wing movements, including pages like Gateway Pundit, Viral Patriot and MAGA Revolution."

Another indication of the right-wing media spread is Fox News' Tucker Carlson's ratings. Carlson's show, which is known for echoing right-wing opinions, conspiracy theories, and other potentially harmful misinformation, is now considered highest-rated cable news program ever on Tuesday nights. The Fox News host's viewership if proof that right-wing media has become a dominant source of misinformation.

Many supporters of President Donald Trump have argued that his reelection campaign is in much better shape than polls have been indicating, noting that he outperformed expectations when he defeated Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016. But reporter David Wasserman, in an article published on NBC News' website this week, examines another possibility — that former Vice President Joe Biden is the one being underrepresented in polls.

"As Election Day approaches and President Donald Trump continues to trail Joe Biden by high single digits both nationally and in key states, their respective bases are buzzing with either hope or dread that 'the polls could be wrong again,'" Wasserman notes. "In truth, public opinion polls are imperfect instruments, and there's always bound to be some degree of error."

Pollsters have received a great deal of criticism following Trump's victory in 2016. But truth be told, the polls weren't as misleading as those critics say. The polls showed Clinton with a national lead; she won the popular vote. And some polls, in late October 2016, showed that swing states like Pennsylvania and Florida were close; Trump narrowly won those states.

"It's important to remember that in 2016, the final pre-election average showed Hillary Clinton leading Trump 46.8% to 43.6 % nationally, according to leading polling aggregator RealClearPolitics," Wasserman explains. "That wasn't too far off the mark: she went on to win the popular vote 48.2% to 46.1%, not exactly strong evidence that hordes of 'shy Trump voters' refused to tell pollsters their true intentions."

Stressing that polls have a margin of error, Wasserman notes that "in the Southwest, polls undershot Democrats' final margin in 17 of 19 cases, including by an average of 1.4 points in 2016 and 4.2 points in 2018. The Southeast was a mixed bag. In Florida, polls underestimated the GOP margin by an average of 2.4 points in 2016 and 3.3 points in 2018 — a polling error similar to that in the Midwest."

Bearing these things in mind, Wasserman writes, it is possible that polls are underestimating Trump — but it is also possible that Biden is the one being underestimated.

"In the end, the only certainty in the polling world is some degree of error," Wasserman emphasizes. "There's no guarantee 2020's errors will boost Trump again or adhere to the Southwest/Midwest patterns we observed in 2016 and 2018. But in light of recent evidence, it wouldn't be all that surprising if Biden defies polls by winning a higher share of the vote in Arizona than Wisconsin — or breaks through in Texas more than he does in Ohio."

With the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, the radical right has completed its long and painstaking project to seize control of the Supreme Court, and to reshape constitutional law for generations to come. Barrett's elevation will give conservatives a 6-3 majority on the court and usher in a crisis of legitimacy for the third branch of government not seen since the 1930s.

The right's triumph has prompted anger and soul-searching among Democrats and progressives, sparking calls to expand the number of Supreme Court justices, echoing Franklin D. Roosevelt's unsuccessful effort to add additional seats to the high tribunal in the midst of the Great Depression.

Enlarging the Supreme Court is entirely within the power of Congress, as the number of justices is not set by the Constitution. The court's composition has, in fact, varied over time, ranging from six justices when the Constitution was ratified to 10 in 1863. The panel was reduced to nine by an act of Congress in 1867 and has remained there since then by statute.

While Democrats should definitely demand court expansion if they retake the White House and the Senate and hold the House, there is at least one additional step they should take to address the court's legitimacy crisis—the impeachment of its most corrupt member—Clarence Thomas.

Thomas should be impeached on charges of perjury for allegedly lying in his annual financial disclosure statements for over a decade and, more fundamentally, for lying in his 1991 confirmation hearing about his disgusting history of sexual harassment.

Although federal judges are appointed for life, their terms are subject to "good behavior." Like all civil officers of the United States, they can be removed, under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution, "on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

The impeachment process, as we were reminded by the experience of President Trump, consists of two basic steps: First, members of the House of Representatives impeach an official by adopting, on a simple majority vote, one or more articles of impeachment, which read very much like a criminal complaint or a grand jury indictment. Step two proceeds with a trial in the Senate, which has the power to convict on a two-thirds ballot. Ouster from office follows conviction automatically, and cannot be appealed.

Only three presidents—Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Trump—have been impeached in our history, and all were exonerated in their Senate trials. A fourth, Richard Nixon, resigned in the face of near-certain impeachment and removal for his role in the Watergate scandal.

The impeachment of federal judges, by contrast, has been far more common. To date, 15 federal judges have been impeached, and eight have been convicted by the Senate. Indeed, the only Senate impeachment trials resulting in convictions have involved judges.

Since 1988, three federal judges have been impeached and removed on charges involving perjury. The last judge to be impeached was G. Thomas Porteous Jr. of the Eastern District of Louisiana, a Clinton appointee who was convicted by the Senate and ejected from office in December 2010 for accepting bribes and, among other derelictions, signing false financial declarations under penalty of perjury.

Thomas, if targeted, would become just the second Supreme Court Justice to be impeached. In 1804, the House charged Associate Justice Samuel Chase with eight articles of impeachment for engaging in arbitrary and oppressive conduct and expressing political bias while serving as a trial judge in certain Sedition Act cases during an era when Supreme Court justices also conducted trials. An outspoken Federalist and supporter of John Adams, Chase incurred the ire of Thomas Jefferson and his Republican allies. Chase was acquitted the following year in a Senate trial presided over by Vice President Aaron Burr. (The chief justice of the Supreme Court presides only in presidential impeachment trials.)

As the Senate's website instructs, Chase's exoneration has since been construed to insulate the "judiciary from… congressional attacks based on disapproval of judges' opinions." Guided by the Chase example, an impeachment proceeding against Thomas could not be initiated because of policy differences Democrats may have with him, even though Thomas has demonstrated a flagrant disregard for the constitutional rights of minorities, women and criminal defendants during his tenure on the Supreme Court.

Like Porteous, however, Thomas is vulnerable to perjury allegations.

Under the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, all high-ranking federal officials are required to file yearly financial disclosure statements for themselves and their spouses to safeguard against conflicts of interest. But for 13 years, Thomas failed to report his wife Virginia's earnings on the mandatory annual financial disclosure forms that he signed under penalty of perjury, indicating that his spouse had no non-investment income when in fact she was steadily employed in high-level jobs as a policy analyst and an outspoken conservative activist.

According to Common Cause, Virginia—who is also a lawyer and a one-time aide to former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey—received more than $686,000 between 2003 and 2007, working for the Heritage Foundation. In 2011, claiming incredulously that he had misunderstood his reporting responsibilities, Thomas amended his financial disclosures, which can now be examined on the OpenSecrets.org website.

As University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos pointed out in a 2011 Daily Beast article, "The relevant question on the disclosure form isn't complicated: Even if Justice Thomas wasn't a lawyer, he shouldn't have needed to hire one to explain to him that the box marked NONE next to the phrase 'Spouse's Non-Investment Income' should only be checked if his spouse had no non-investment income." In Campos' view, Thomas' omissions were "criminal."

Thomas' alleged perjury in his testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991 was of a far greater magnitude, centering on his denial under oath that he harassed Anita Hill and other female colleagues while he served as the chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The clash between Hill and Thomas was televised and made for riveting viewing, even more so than the rancorous battle over the 2018 confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh. Thomas was treated with kid gloves by the all-male members of the Judiciary Committee, who sat largely in silence as he denied ever engaging in inappropriate behavior and claimed that he was being "subjected to a 'high-tech lynching.'"

Hill, who is now a professor of social policy and law at Brandeis University, was treated with scorn and contempt by the Judiciary Committee. Some members called her "delusional," suggested she was mentally "unstable" and was a "scorned woman" out for revenge against Thomas for rebuffing her romantic advances.

In addition to assassinating Hill's character, the committee, under the chairmanship of Joe Biden, then the senior Democratic senator from Delaware, declined to call three other female Thomas accusers to testify at the hearing. One of those accusers, writer Angela Wright, remains an outspoken critic of Thomas, and has publicly called for his impeachment. Anita Hill, too, has never wavered, insisting she told the truth.

Unlike criminal trials, impeachment proceedings are not governed by statutes of limitations. In any event, it is never too late to do justice and provide Hill and Thomas' other accusers with the fair hearing they never received.

Even assuming Thomas would avoid conviction in the Senate, his impeachment trial would be nothing like the farce of Trump's proceeding. With Democrats holding a majority in the Senate and Kamala Harris presiding as vice president, documents would be subpoenaed and witnesses, including Thomas, would be called to testify.

The impeachment of Thomas would also offer Biden a full and final opportunity to make amends for the past. Above all, combined with a move to expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court, impeaching Thomas would restore the legitimacy of the judiciary as a bulwark of constitutional rights, and send a message that the nation has had enough of Republican efforts to return the country to the dark days before the New Deal and the civil rights movement.

Before any of that happens, of course, Donald Trump and his GOP enablers must be defeated at the polls.

Bill Blum is a retired judge and a lawyer in Los Angeles. He is a lecturer at the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication. He writes regularly on law and politics and is the author of three widely acclaimed legal thrillers: Prejudicial Error, The Last Appeal, and The Face of Justice.

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

Dismissing glaring concerns about voter intimidation, a Michigan judge on Tuesday struck down a directive from the secretary of state banning the open carry of firearms at polling places on Election Day.

The Associated Press reports Michigan Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray granted a preliminary injunction in favor of gun rights advocates who had filed a lawsuit challenging an October 16 order from Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson declaring a universal ban on the open carry of guns within 100 feet of polling places on November 3. The injunction does not apply to places such as schools or churches that already prohibit open carry.

"There are voters who are afraid, there are election workers who are afraid."

—Heather Meingast, assistant state attorney general

Benson had argued that the ban was needed to deter voter intimidation in the wake of the revelation of a plot by far-right militia members—who are supporters of President Donald Trump—to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat.

However, Murray asserted that Benson was attempting to create a new administrative rule without following the proper procedures.

"It is important to recognize that this case is not about whether it is a good idea to openly carry a firearm at a polling place, or whether the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents the secretary of state's ... directive," Murray wrote in his opinion.

Michigan Secretary of State @JocelynBenson was right to ban guns at the polls. They endanger our safety and our democracy. Michigan Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast: "There are voters who are afraid. There are election workers who are afraid." https://t.co/cNIK9otnNe
— Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (@CSGV) October 27, 2020

"The court's duty is not to act as an overseer of the [Michigan] Department of State, nor is it to impose its view on the wisdom of openly carrying firearms at polling places or other election locations," wrote Murray. "More importantly its constitutional role is properly limited to only declaring what the law is, not what it should be."

"The secretary just didn't do this in the right way and at the right time," Murray said, adding that if she wanted to ban open carry at polling places she "should have done this months ago."

The Detroit Free Press reports state Assistant Attorney General Heather Meingast countered that concerns regarding guns at polling places weren't as prevalent months ago as they are now, especially in light of the plot to kidnap the governor. Meingast said that now "there are voters who are afraid, there are election workers who are afraid."

Benson and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, also a Democrat, vowed to appeal Murray's injunction.

Press Secretary Ryan Jarvi has issued the following statement in response to MI Court of Claims Judge Christopher Murray's decision regarding the prohibition of open carry of firearms at the polls on Election Day: pic.twitter.com/mwhI6TwtP0
— Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (@MIAttyGen) October 27, 2020

"As the state's chief elections officer, I have the sworn duty to protect every voter and their right to cast the ballot free from intimidation and harassment," Benson said. "I will continue to protect that right in Michigan."

Armed far-right groups including the Oath Keepers and Q-Anon conspiracists have said they will heed Trump's call for an "army" of supporters to "go into the polls and watch very carefully," which many observers say is nothing less than an endorsement of—if not a rallying call for—illegal voter intimidation.

What if armed, far-right groups go to the polls? Some plan to https://t.co/DRVZ9ubSQE
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 10, 2020

Love to watch the 2nd amendment cannibalize the 15th https://t.co/gQ7Rxuk2px
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 27, 2020

Steven Gardiner, a scholar at the progressive think tank Political Research Associates, told The Guardian earlier this month that "the militias will absolutely seize on" Trump's comments.

"The possibility of armed factions with military-style rifles showing up at polling places is very troubling," Gardiner said.

When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, he railed against crony capitalism in Washington, D.C. and promised to "drain the swamp" if elected. But a Washington Post article published this week takes a close look at the profits that his businesses have been enjoying at the expense of taxpayers because of his presidency.

The Post notes that when Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, they did so at the president's Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida — which Trump described as the "southern White House."

"For Trump, there was another hidden benefit: money," the Post reports. "At Mar-a-Lago, Trump's company would get paid to host his summit. In the next two days, as Trump and Abe talked about trade and North Korea, Trump's Palm Beach, Fla., club billed the U.S. government $13,700 for guest rooms, $16,500 for food and wine and $6000 for the roses and other floral arrangements."

But according to Post reporters David A. Fahrenthold, Josh Dawsey, Jonathan O'Connell and Anu Narayanswamy, that meeting with Abe was hardly the only time Trump properties have profited from government business.

"Since his first month in office, Trump has used his power to direct millions from U.S. taxpayers — and from his political supporters — into his own businesses," the reporters explain. "The Washington Post has sought to compile examples of this spending through open records requests and a lawsuit. In all, he has received at least $8.1 million from these two sources since he took office, those documents and publicly available records show."

The Trump Organization, according to the Post, has been billing U.S. taxpayers for a wide range of items.

"Since 2017," the Post reports, "Trump's company has charged taxpayers for hotel rooms, ballrooms, cottages, rental houses, golf carts, votive candles, floating candles, candelabras, furniture moving, resort fees, decorative palm trees, strip steak, chocolate cake, breakfast buffets, $88 bottles of wine and $1000 worth of liquor for White House aides. And water."

The Post's reporting is receiving a great deal of attention on social media. Fahrenthold tweeted the article on Tuesday, noting, "Previously un-released documents show the government has paid $2.5 million to @realdonaldtrump 's businesses. Far more than we knew. Trump Org charged $7700 for a dinner, $6000 for floral arrangements…. and $3 for POTUS's own glass of water." And responses have been numerous.

Twitter user Peter Charbonneau, @pcharbonneau21, sarcastically posted, "B-b-b-but he doesn't take a salary!" — to which @barefootnonna responded, "No but he spends many times more of taxpayer dollars on visits to his resorts. Taxpayers would be much better off if he would take his salary and quit benefiting himself financially at our expense. Imagine Obama that!"

@Schnufflerowner tweeted, "$3 for a glass of water is a costly way to drain the swamp." And @007__NIL responded with more sarcasm, posting, "To be fair $3 for water wasn't bad given they had to supply it in a sippy cup."

Other Twitter users, however, weren't so sarcastic — just angry.

@BishesBrew wrote, "Trump has been stealing from the American taxpayers from Day One, just like Trump has also been violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution his entire corrupt presidency." And @HeatherBendit wrote, "Thank you, thank you, thank you for publishing this. I simply cannot understand why this isn't one of the Biden Campaign's non-policy talking points. Trump's official portrait should portray him with his hand in the White House Cookie Jar."

@CobraMantis posted, "I like presidents who don't funnel taxpayer money directly into their own pockets." And @simplyadornedal tweeted, "We the people are getting bankrupted by the Trumps."

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