LEGAL SHENANIGANS

Republicans are threatening legal challenges aimed at keeping the new Democratic presidential nominee off state ballots. But such lawsuits have “zero chance,” experts tell What A Day.

• House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) started warming up the GOP lawsuit machine even before President Biden backed away from his campaign on Sunday, raising the prospect of attempting to block Biden’s replacement from on state ballots earlier that morning on ABC’s “This Week.” “Every state has its own system, and in some of these, it’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate,” Johnson claimed.
• Johnson’s not alone. The Heritage Foundation, the right-wing think tank associated with the infamous Project 2025 to rapidly reshape the federal government if disgraced former President Trump seizes power, laid out a similar plan back in June. That approach put a focus on three battleground states in particular: Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.
• But such threats are wildly overblown, legal experts told What A Day. For one thing, Democrats haven’t technically picked a nominee yet — not Biden, and not his most likely successor, Vice President Kamala Harris. That means there is no switcheroo to even talk about, let alone to challenge in court, according to Rick Hasen, a widely-known election law expert at UCLA School of Law.
• “There is no nominee yet of the Democratic Party for president,” Hasen said. Biden was the presumptive nominee, not the actual nominee. “So the idea that somehow it would be a problem to switch the nominee is based on a false premise,” he added. That means changing the nominee remains “primarily a political question, not a legal question,” according to Hasen, at least at this stage.

The upshot is that the GOP dream of using lawfare to keep Biden’s successor off the ticket looks doomed, especially if Democrats continue to rally around Harris before their convention.

• “I wouldn’t be surprised by lawsuits being filed,”Justin Levitt, a constitutional law professor at Loyola Marymount University, told What A Day. “Sadly, that’s the world in which we live.  But there’s zero chance that they work.” Technically speaking, the presidential primary process is for voters to choose delegates to the party’s convention, which Democrats will hold in August. The party’s rules for the convention control how the delegates choose the nominee. That means, in short, he said: “There’s no legal basis for any challenge to win,” based on how the voters have chosen delegates.
• “The parties control the process as to who their nominee is,” Edward B. Foley, a law professor who leads Ohio State University’s election law program, told the Associated Press. “I just don’t see how the Republican Party or anyone associated with the Republican Party would have any standing to bring any litigation in connection with this.”

Trump and his top aides fashioned their entire campaign around attacks aimed specifically at Biden. It’s little wonder they’re looking for every chance they can to thwart his successor.

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Harris and the Democratic Party raised about $250 million in contributions and donor pledges in a stunning windfall that flooded in during the hours after Biden withdrew. Dems in disarray!!!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu departed Monday for a controversial three-day trip to Washington D.C., which will culminate in an address to Congress on Wednesday. Protests are being planned all over the city. It’s not too late to uninvite him! Just an idea!

Senate Republicans plan to target Harris as too liberal and “weird,” according to a strategy memo obtained by Axios. They want to go after her for laughing at odd moments, and loving Venn diagrams. Imagine how fucked up your crew is when your best line of attack is, “She laughs sometimes…what’s that about?”

Details are emerging about how Biden reached his last-minute decision to step down. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled that she might soon go public with her concerns about his candidacy, Politico reported. Biden’s advisors also concluded there was “no path” to victory, according to Axios.

Pelosi gave Harris her official endorsement on Monday. Some top Democrats are reportedly staggering their endorsement announcements to keep the news cycle going, Axios reported. Pushing out a struggling nominee? Putting a prosecutor up against a felon? Using the news cycles effectively??? The Democratic Party is finally all grown up!

Both Republicans and Democrats called for the resignation of embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle after a contentious Congressional hearing over the agency’s handling of last week’s botched assassination attempt against Trump.