Muttroxia

What can you say, just a totally groovy tune. Makes ya sing along.

Springtime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF6VjYqoBQQ

Check out the live versions also.

Why does this award even exist? Many internet sites claim it was a cunning strategy invented in the middle of last century by Red Aurebach. By keeping a starter player on the bench, he could maintain pressure throughout the game for more wins. Or perhaps it was to soothe egos. Frank Ramsey was a good player, he was a starter-level player. The whole “6th man” concept kept him satisfied with coming off the bench.

Either way, it was an idea built around that particular Celtics team’s lineup and how it related to the rest of the league. It doesn’t scale. It’s not the 1960s. Most teams today don’t happen to have the talent level fall off between positions six and seven. In todays NBA more stars take nights off or have reduced minutes, so player number six plays more and starts more games than in those days.

But mostly, the logic just doesn’t add up. If a team is so deep that a player who would start on most teams comes off their bench instead, that player is a good candidate for the 6th man.

Payton Pritchard is good enough to be starting for most teams in the NBA. But he happens to have Derrick White and Jrue Holiday starting in front of him. That’s great for the Celtics. It’s not so great for Payton Pritchard since he doesn’t get to start. But at least it makes him a leader for sixth man of the year award. Two years ago, Malcolm Brogdon was also coming off the bench behind White and Holiday. Brogdon became the sixth man of the year. That is not because Brogdon and Pritchard are particularly bad or particularly great players – they are both good players who just happened to be on a stacked team at that position so they had to come off the bench.

The 6th man award is actually the “best player not quite enough good to start because the team is loaded” award. That’s not so great an achievement. It’s an achievement of the front office who built the roster, not the individual player. If Jrue Holiday is traded/dumped next year for salary cap reasons, Pritchard will go from an NBA award winner to a non-award winning guard on an amazing team. Yay?

One of my smarter very-liberal friends posted on Facebook about a proposed Project 2029 plan.

I posted a similar list two years ago. It’s not a platform, they are things to improve American democracy:

• Removing the Hastert Rule
• The National Popular Vote
• Approval Voting 
• SCOTUS Term Limits
• Leftovers

I’m also mostly aligned with the “Common Sense Democrat manifesto” platform proposed by Matt Yglesias.

Anyhow — I approve of most but not all of the below “2029” ideas. I was challenged for more detail. Challenge accepted!

1. Eliminating Citizens United: Yes. Anything that reduces the influence of money on politics is good. The richest man in the world who also cares about politics (Elon Musk, duh) shouldn’t have such a huge influence, but it was awful before he showed up. I am in favor of anything that improves the voting and electoral process (two of my four priorities fit under that).
2. Doubling Minimum Wage: Yes, okay, I guess. Generally, I am in favor of income/wealth redistributive policies from the richer to the poorer, this fits under that. The minimum wage is weird. Basic economics says it is a bad idea, yet none of the bad things materialize when it’s tried. Given that, why not increase it. I have no idea if doubling is an appropriate amount, and how do you account for higher wage cities vs rural America etc.. but all that is second order.
3. Removing Presidential Immunity: Of course. It’s amazing that we need to reassert the President is not a king, the law still applies. C’mon.
4. Breaking up Massive Corporations: No. I haven’t seen a convincing case for it, in a way that also recognizes the many goods that come from massive corporations. As a sub-bullet, I feel strongly we should re-legislate what a corporation is. Corporations are legal fictions, not people. We can legislatively define them however we want, what rights and privileges they get.
5. SCOTUS Term Limits: Yes, 100%.
6. Expanding SCOTUS to 13: Nope. Don’t see a reason for it. It will just make everything worse. Liberals who think this will solve anything are crazy.
7. Taxing Mega Churches: All religious profit institutions that can’t follow the law and stay out of the secular world should have their tax-exempt status removed. As was starting to happen in the Obama administration. Other than that, I don’t see the point of this. If this was a broader policy around re-thinking non-profits in general I might change my mind (see above about corporations).
8. Women’s Healthcare Rights: I assume this is the latest code phrase for legalized abortion. Yes.
9. Banning Right-to-Work Laws: No. I don’t see the case for it. I live in a right to work state, no one here is particularly repressed and the economic benefits are real.
10. Amendment for Marriage Rights: I don’t know what this is.
11. Reversing Global Warming: Yes.
12. Medicare for All: It’s a fine partial solution to the health care mess in America. There are lots of other things that would help, this is as good as any. At least it’s feasible.
13. Assault Weapons Bans: Meh. I don’t think this is the real problem. Focus ought to be on enforcing current laws, background checks, a general re-balancing of what is allowed… this is one little bit that doesn’t matter much. And it’s crazy hard to define, enforce, stirs up massive opposition, etc. Not something to focus on.
14. Progressive Taxation (added by poster): 100% yes. But we already have this, not sure why it would need to be on a platform.

I don’t really get what this 2029 list is all about. It’s presumably a response to the project 2025 plan. This is an odd way to frame since the 2025 plan was disowned by Trump and most of the GOP even as they now follow many of the recommendations. That is, although the 2025 plan is public, it was meant to be kind of a secret. It’s a war plan. It’s the quiet part out loud. This list of 2029 priorities looks like it is meant to be a platform, a rallying cry, it’s on Facebook. Or maybe not, it’s hard to tell. After all, most of the items here are things that have been Democratic priorities for decades. Maybe it came from this Op-ed. But that oped is um… well… smart. This 2029 plan isn’t. Even though I agree with most of it, it’s just a grab bag of stuff, and seems designed to lose any general election.

Sports

All NBA predictions refer to the 2024/2025 season that ends June 2025.

• The NBA MVP will once again be Nikola Jokic. (I drafted that a couple weeks ago. SGA is now the favorite, but I’m sticking with Jokic. His stats are better this year than last year, c’mon.)
• The Thunder win the Western Conference. Sorry Nuggets, Rockets, Grizzlies – there is one elite team in the West and it’s the Thunder.
• The Cavaliers or Celtics win the Eastern Conference. Sorry Knicks, Bucks, 76ers – there are two elite teams in the East and it’s these two. I went back and forth on The Celtics – it’s very easy to see how they could win it all, and it’s also easy to see them getting knocked out in the second round (they might meet the Cavs before the conference finals), in the end I’m not predicting anything for them.
• The Oklahoma City Thunder will be in the NBA finals three of the next five years . They are already one of the best teams out there and have a sickening amount of high draft picks and cap space over the next few years. This won’t be settled for a few years of course.
• The Atlanta Hawks will continue to be mediocre or worse. Sorry, I don’t buy the hype. Last year I correctly predicted they would be under 55%, and they ended the calendar year just below that. The prediction is that they will finish the 2024/2025 season at 60% or less. That is, they might improve slightly in the back half of the season, but not much.
• The NBA All Star game will continue to suck. You can play with the format all you want, but the stars still don’t want to play hard.
• Payton Pritchard will win the sixth man award, the stupidest of all NBA awards.
• The New England Patriots win two more games in 2025/26 season than in 2024/25. The Patriots finished 4-13, so I predict them to win 6 or more games next season. This is a combination of Maye getting better, getting a decent coach (please be Vrabel), and regression to the mean. Update: They did hire Vrabel. That’s worth a win or two, and they have a great draft pick, let’s be optimistic and predict 8 wins.
• Bijan Robinson will have over 1,500 yards in 2025/26: (He had over 1,7000 this year so this is not a longshot. But Pennix is passing more and more, they won’t have to relay on Robinson as much.
• Saquon Barkley will have less than 2,000 yards in 2025/26. Regression to the mean again.

The Economy

My hypothesis is the economy under Trump won’t change much. It’s been consistent since 2010 (excluding the pandemic and aftereffects). Trump will change his mind about many ideas, won’t be able to make them happen, or they won’t matter that much.

• Inflation does not increase much in 2025. Although Trump comes to office explicitly planning policies which increase inflation, it won’t happen. The post-pandemic inflation bubble will continue deflating (in the USA as everywhere). Prediction is that the average for 2025 will be between 2.3% and 3.5%. Source.
• The Misery Index will stay below 7 in 2025. The Misery Index is the sum of unemployment and inflation. Despite Trump’s terrible policy ideas, the American economy will continue to hum along. Trump was handed a great economy, he won’t screw it up much.
• Electric car sales finish above 10% in 2025 Q4. Even if all incentives are removed, that won’t happen until 2026. Many consumers will buy now, while the tax credit is in place.

Politics

• The election interference case against Trump in Georgia will not be decided against him in 2025. That weird phrasing is because I think the likeliest outcome is it all falls apart somehow, and the next most likely is that it is delayed past 2025.
• Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration. Why start now?
• There is at least one real threat of government shutdown in 2025. (Holy cow, there was already one before Trump even took office. WTF.)
• No major Democrats are indicted for crimes related to their political activities. That is, while Trump and the FBI may go after his various enemies, none of them will be formally indicted. (If they are indicted for the usual corruption that doesn’t count, only political activities.)
• At least two of these four get confirmed… Trump owns the GOP, they won’t push back. The picks are Pete Hesgeth for Defense, RFK Jr for Health and Human Services, Tulsi Gabbard for Director National Intelligence, and Kash Patel at the FBI.

Randoms

• One of these three people will die in 2025: Clint Eastwood, Alan Greenspan, Mel Brooks.
• Muttroxia will have a month with four or more posts after January. I’m switching it up! I’ve always taken the under.

See you next year for the scoring!

2024 was a good year for Muttroxia predictions.

In 2024, I made a change. Although I gave confidence levels for each prediction, I am scoring as simply right or wrong. There isn’t enough of a difference between the levels and the sample size is far too small to conclude anything.

Interestingly, Matt Yglesias came to the same conclusion, all his 2025 predictions are set at the 80% level. As I modeled these posts on his, it’s good to see we did the same tweak.

At press time, I have correctly predicted 12 out 15 with two questions removed. Coincidentally, that’s an 80% success rate, exactly what I am aiming for.

That’s much better than in 2023 (56% correct). Why is that? Either I got better at predictions (that is the entire goal of the exercise), I got more cautious about predictions, or maybe it’s just random variation.

Sports

• The NBA MVP will be Jokic (70%).
  • Yes. I should have specified the year. This refers to the MVP award given out in 2024, for the 2023/2024 season. For the NBA I am making awards based on half the season already played.
• The NBA MVP will be Jokic, Luka, or Giannis (90%).
  • Yes.
• Celtics make it to the NBA Finals (80%):
  • Yes! The boys won it all!
  • Neither University of Georgia nor University of Michigan will win the College Football National Championship (that is technically played in 2025) (80%):
• Yes. The returning champs University of Michigan had a bad year, although they had several huge wins (beating Ohio State never gets old, and same for Alabama). Although they were ranked at #2, UGA lost to Notre Dame last night in their first CFP game.
• Bijan Robinson will have over 1,200 yards (70%):
  • Yes. He’s at 1,693 yards and the regular season isn’t over yet.
• The Atlanta Hawks will continue to be mediocre or worse. They’ll end up at 45 wins or worse, a winning percentage of 55% or worse as of December 31, 2024 (70%).
  • Yes. The Hawks have 18 wins and 15 losses, which is 54.5%. Whew, barely made that one! There is a lot of talk about The Hawks this year. Trae Young had modified his game and is trying to play defense, De’Andre Hunter is suddenly great, and the rookie is good. They are doing better this year than last (they finished at 43.9% last year). Fans should feel positive about the improvements, but they are still not a great team.

Six for six in sports predictions!

The Economy

• Inflation continues to decline in 2024 (90%). The prediction is that inflation will be below 4.1 (Dec 2023) in December 2024.
  • Yes. Technically not determined yet, but c’mon. The last 11 months have all been below the benchmark, it has averaged below 3% for the year so far — this is an easy win. Enjoy your gift of a good economy Mr. Trump.
• Average Gas Price has gas price at $3.00. on Election Day (70%):
  • No. Gas prices were around $3.20 on election day.
• The stock market will become more unbalanced (70%).
  • I’m going to kill this question. I found many interesting sources, but nothing with a straightforward number tracked over time. JP Morgan and others see concentration at an all-time high, and believe it may/will reverse. I believe it is a consequence of true changes in the world, and will continue.
• Electric car sales top 10% in the USA. (80%)
  • No. Q4 was 8.7%, so not even that close. Good trend though – 2021 was 3.2%, 2022 was 5.8%, 2023 was 7.3%, and now 2024 was around 8.5%.
    (By the way, this prediction was for fully electric cars. When you include hybrids, it’s over 21%. Wow, I didn’t realize it was so high.)

Inflation:

Politics

• None of the four Donald Trump trials finishes before election day. This does not include appeals. No verdicts. 80%.
  • Yes. The New York trial finished, he was found guilty on 34 counts. But he wasn’t sentenced. I don’t know how to score this one because I didn’t define “finished” well enough. Update: My favorite legal podcast offhandedly said that a conviction isn’t final until sentencing. The judge may push for sentencing, just to preserve the conviction.
• Congress passes no significant legislation about immigration (90%):
  • Yes.
• No major political figures are both impeached, and then convicted by the Senate (90%):
  • Yes.
• Dems retain control of Senate (60%):
  • No. The GOP has 53 seats now. What a dumb prediction, I just really wanted it to be true.
• Trump or Biden, who wins?: Nope. Pass. Next one. I can’t even talk about it. God help us.
  • NO JUDGEMENT. The fact that I wouldn’t make this prediction tells you everything. In my heart of hearts I knew what would happen. Sigh. I gave Kamala 40-45% odds of winning, and she was obviously better positioned than Biden, so I kinda did predict the outcome.

Leftovers

• Two of these five people will die in 2024 (70%): Jimmy Carter, Ethel Kennedy, Mel Brooks, Dick Van Dyke, Alan Greenspan
  • Yes. Ethel Kennedy died on Oct 10^th. Jimmy Carter died on Dec 29^th. (Dick Van Dyke looks great for 99, and this video is just wonderful.)
• Muttroxia will not have any months with over five posts after January. (80%). Last year I set this at 10 posts and was nowhere close, it’ll be a little more competitive this year.
  • Yes. The closest was July with four. I don’t expect much of a change this year.

I have been actively engaged with AI over the last few weeks. It’s simply incredible.

In about 45 minutes, I used Co-Pilot for Github to write a decent Hangman game in HTML and Javascript. The key is that I never referenced the code or anything technical. Instructions were simple English:

• “Make the letter choices a grid, and they get greyed out after a guess.”
• “If the players loses, show the correct word and the definition.”
• “Your hangman has four legs, bring it back down to two.”
• “That code didn’t work, I got an error message. Fix it.” etc.
  

That was eye-opening. But this… this… just press play.

This fake podcast was generated by AI (Google, Vertex AI). I simply pointed the system to www.muttrox.com, and had this five minutes later. Wow.

The future is here. My mind is blown.

Last year I posted about the National Popular Vote. This is a cool constitutional hack. State by state, a state agrees that it will gives all of its electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. This only goes into effect once enough states have entered into the deal that their combined electoral votes are above 270, which means they now determine the election.

At the time I wrote that, we were at 195 electoral votes. Today we are at 209. Only 61 to go!

One of the problems with any change that effectively broadens the voting pool is that it usually favors the Democrats, because they tend to have more votes. So Republicans tend to fight these kinds of initiatives. You could say Democrats are the party of voting and democracy, but perhaps that is less a moral cause than a strategic one. At some point they become the same thing.

For the first time since 2004, the Republicans indisputably won the national vote. That means that they should be more open to the National Popular Vote than before. It’s an unusual time in American voting patterns, maybe we use that to promote some good ideas, like this one.

So — take some action. Write your state legislators.

This year I’m following seven different football teams. I can’t stay on top of every game! Here’s my order of priority:

1. Old School Fantasy Football League: Now that the Patriots aren’t so great, most of my focus goes here. I’ve been playing fantasy football with this group of people since 2008. This league has a lot of pride in it, the stakes are very high. Over the last couple years I’ve been trading more and more so I need to follow closely. Let’s go Jalen Hurts!
2. Atlanta Falcons: Who would have expected this? But they are exciting, a lot of upside, I can get to a couple games in person if they’re good, I don’t need NFL Sunday Ticket, I have Bijan Robinson in both fantasy leagues… let’s go Falcons!
3. University of Georgia: My oldest son goes here. They won the national championship his freshman and sophomore years, and they have good odds to do it again now in his senior year. We usually go to a game each year. Go Dawgs!
4. University of Michigan: My own alma mater, the defending national champions. I doubt they’ll be great this year. But if they have a good season, they could easily move up a couple ranks in this depth chart.
5. New England Patriots: I’ve followed them since I knew what football was. I had the twenty greatest years with them any fan could hope for. I followed them for a couple more after that. But this year — there’s not even hope. C’mon.
6. Florida State University: My son just started there, I was all ready to be a fan, I had them higher in this list — and then they lost the first two games before the real season started. Sad. I’ll tune in for scores I suppose.
7. Work Fantasy Football League (who cares)

Last Friday we were supposed to fly to Detroit for the wedding of a good friend. But last Friday was the Crowdstrike issue. Yikes! Our flights were cancelled and there were no others. What could we do? Simple. Throw the bags in the Tesla, head on out to Detroit, 700+ miles in either direction.

How did it work out?

Superchargers network: Fantastic. This is the first time we’ve gone more than five hours from home. Based on those drives, we were not nervous at all. And it was correct not to be nervous, there weren’t any problems. The navigation feature that plots your routes finds the correct superchargers to stop at, how long to stay there, how much to charge up, etc. It has it all figured out.

There are plenty of superchargers along the way. All of the stops were very close to the highway exits, we never had to go far out of the way. All of the stops were near grocery stores, restaurants, or malls. There was always a place to eat and easy ways to kill time. Charging added somewhere around two hours to the total driving time in each direction. If you’re nervous about the network, don’t be. Relax.

Self-driving: The full-self driving is great. Eleven hours of driving was not the slog you might think. In fact, we had a fun time because we didn’t have to pay nearly as much attention to the road. We were more physically relaxed because the driver could move their arms and legs around, it’s not as physically demanding. The self-driving is noticeably better than a year ago, we didn’t have one “What the hell is it doing!!!???” moment.

Self-parking: Self-parking is a nice little sub-feature of the self-driving package. When you are near a parking spot, you can tap on a dialog, and the car will park itself. My daughter took her drivers test last month, and one of the main skills of backing into a space is already obsolete.

Dollars: Let’s break it down. We spent about $140 in charging, for about 1,450 miles of travel. We’ll call that one dollar per ten miles. Let’s say a gas powered car is 25 miles to the gallon (it’s mostly highway driving), that’s 58 gallons needed, at about $3.50 a gallon is $203. So the Tesla is under 70% of the cost of a gas vehicle. That’s honestly worse than I expected, I thought it would be cheaper by a factor of two or three. I’ve been spoiled by the electricity costs of charging through the house. Superchargers are more expensive — Tesla charges you a premium to get the car ready quickly (roughly twenty five times faster than home charging). It would have been better if the hotel had free charging, as many do.

So on straight up energy costs Tesla wins over gas vehicles by a good margin.

But driving has other costs. Besides the energy bills, we spent $70 to stay in a terrible hotel in Dayton, Ohio the first. On the other hand we didn’t pay Delta for two flights, nor parking our car at the airport. All in all, we spent ~$210 driving our EV compared to the ~$650 we would have spent by flying. Not bad!

Joe Biden is being feted by all. What a sacrifice he has made! What a patriot! Like George Washington, Biden was willing to walk away from power for the good of the country.

I’m not as convinced, walking away from a campaign that will certainly lose isn’t seem incredibly heroic, though it’s something. The heroes are the Democrats who pushed him out, which could easily have doomed their own careers.

Let us begin with the Republican Party, and the awful dynamics we’ve watched for the last eight years. Trump would be a historical blip, except for the large numbers of Republicans who put their personal careers over their duty to their country. Nearly every one of them knew exactly how unfit Trump was for office, how dangerous he was to the country, how he should not be allowed anywhere near the Oval Office. Yet, nearly every single one of them bent the knee. When push came to shove, they put their careers ahead of their country.

Liz Cheney is one of the only heroes, who did all she could. In the end it was not enough, and her political career is essentially over. She made the sacrifice. Who else did? No one. The GOP dug their own graves, one by one, as each politician sold out save their own skin at the price of letting a corrupt ignorant fool to become president. I don’t know how they can look in the mirror.

Now let us pivot to the Democratic party, and the choices for down-ballot Senators and Representatives over the last couple weeks. They knew that sticking with Biden was bad for them. But speaking up to replace Biden would also be bad for them — if it didn’t work. And it probably wouldn’t work. Of course he did step down, but that was not a likely outcome, that’s why it is a historic event. The odds were that Biden would stay in the race, he would lose, and the Democratic establishment would go after anyone who tried to get him out. For these politicians, their self-interest was to stay silent and hope Biden wouldn’t drag them down.

Their choice was not as obvious as that faced by the GOP. But the dynamic was similar. Their own selfish interests incentivized them to allow Biden to continue as nominee even while believing he was not up for the job. That is the same choice the Republican Party failed so badly.

A few days ago, it looked as if the Democratic Party would fail it also. But they did not. Behind the scenes (and eventually openly) many pushed for Biden to step aside. Rank and file members, leadership (particularly Nancy Pelosi do not mess with her ever really), and other party elders gradually moved to push Biden out.

Again, the choice facing the Democratic Party was not as stark facing the GOP. The balance of self-interest and patriotism was not as bad as that facing the GOP, so there was not as much pressure to do the right thing. But in the end, the Democrats did the right thing for the country by removing their candidate who was not fit for the job. All those involved in making the happen should be commended.

Just a couple weeks ago I predicted that Biden would not drop out of the race. I was wrong. History is made.

I did predict that Kamala would pick up endorsements from everyone in the first 48 hours, would get to the convention fully anointed and in control of both Democratic money and delegates. Sadly, I wasn’t at a computer and only said it in a phone conversation. It wasn’t a hard prediction, little credit to be awarded.

So what happens next? The Trump campaign has been fearing this for a long time. Their campaign was explicitly built to go after Joe Biden particularly. (I recommend this interview about the Trump Campaign strategy. It is far more discipline and smart than I realized.) Without Biden, many of the GOP attacks are irrelevant or greatly weakened. While Trump was surprisingly under control during the debate (and the first fifteen minutes of his acceptance speech), he will get absolutely crushed in a debate where voters can see how crazy and old he is without Biden for comparison.

Trump will not be able to control himself for very long. As Harris starts going after him and scoring points, and his usual attacks don’t land, he is going to revert to racism and sexism. He won’t be able to help himself. I don’t think that plays well. The GOP has done a great job of working to attract minorities, he’s going to sabotage all that work. And though Harris may have been selected for VP because of her gender, and she is very vocal on abortion, she has never made gender central to her pitch, unlike Hilary in 2016.

What are the odds of her winning? I put it at 40-45%. In the end, it is hard to change the minds of voters. This will help, but the advantages are still with the GOP. Trump has been ahead for a year, and I don’t think this will help enough. Obviously I hope I’m wrong. (Quick straw poll of my political friends – all were in the 40-55% range.)

UPDATE (July 10): Well, this is what happens when you do your own take without doing enough research. Everything below holds up just fine through page six of the decision. The expectation was for the Supreme Court to lay out these guidelines and then send the case back to the lower courts. The lower courts would then determine if Trumps actions were official, presumptively official, or unofficial, and to move forward based on that determination.

Instead the court decided to rule on many of the main elements (in Trumps favor), which there was no need to do. Then they made some (crazy as heck) rules about what was official and what wasn’t. Then they said that in most of these cases, you can’t even investigate. Just insane.

I end up agreeing with just about every other pundit and columnist. The decision is terrible, and fundamentally un-American. No one is above the law, even the president. Until now.

For intellectual honesty, I leave the original post below.

---

It’s the end of democracy. Joe Biden pre-empted Jeopardy to tell us all how terrible it was. Every publication and pundit and podcast is going crazy. They’re wrong. I think the decision is perfectly correct.

The nature of that power requires that a former President have some immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts during his tenure in office. At least with respect to the President’s exercise of his core constitutional powers, this immunity must be absolute. As for his remaining official actions, he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity.

…As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decision making is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not
support immunity for unofficial conduct.

The key point is the distinction between official and non-official actions. Actions under the President’s official duties are essentially immune to criminal prosecution. The office requires wide latitude to effectively govern the nation. Sure, that makes sense.

But, unofficial actions are still up for game. Don’t ignore the second paragraph! The trick is distinguishing which is which. That’s appropriate! Everything Trump did around Jan 6 was not official actions. Campaigns (and of course insurrections) are not part of Presidential duties.

That’s the question Jack Smith should have been litigating. The question wasn’t if Trump was immune for official actions, the question was if Trumps actions were official. It was a mistake not to frame it that way in the first place. Now it has to be litigated, which will take us past the election.

There is another silver lining. Consider all the retribution that Trump has promised against Biden. With this decision Biden can’t be prosecuted by a Trump DOJ. The Supreme Court likely had this in mind as well.

All in all, a good decision.