Fringe Scheme to Reverse 2020 Election Splits Wisconsin G.O.P.
False claims that Donald J. Trump can be reinstalled in the White House are picking up steam — and spiraling further from reality as they go.
By Reid J. Epstein
Feb. 19, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
MADISON, Wis. — First, Wisconsin Republicans ordered an audit of the 2020 election. Then they passed a raft of new restrictions on voting. And in June, they authorized the nation’s only special counsel investigation into 2020.
Now, more than 15 months after former President Donald J. Trump lost the state by 20,682 votes, an increasingly vocal segment of the Republican Party is getting behind a new scheme: decertifying the results of the 2020 presidential election in hopes of reinstalling Mr. Trump in the White House.
Wisconsin is closer to the next federal election than the last, but the Republican effort to overturn the election results here is picking up steam rather than fading away — and spiraling further from reality as it goes. The latest turn, which has been fueled by Mr. Trump, bogus legal theories and a new candidate for governor, is creating chaos in the Republican Party and threatening to undermine its push to win the contests this year for governor and the Senate.
The situation in Wisconsin may be the most striking example of the struggle by Republican leaders to hold together their party when many of its most animated voters simply will not accept the reality of Mr. Trump’s loss.
In Wisconsin, Robin Vos, the Assembly speaker who has allowed vague theories about fraud to spread unchecked, is now struggling to rein them in. Even Mr. Vos’s careful attempts have turned election deniers sharply against him.
“This is a real issue,” said Timothy Ramthun, the Republican state representative who has turned his push to decertify the election into a nascent campaign for governor. Mr. Ramthun has asserted that if the Wisconsin Legislature decertifies the results and rescinds the state’s 10 electoral votes — an action with no basis in state or federal law — it could set off a movement that would oust President Biden from office.
“We don’t wear tinfoil hats,” he said. “We’re not fringe.”
Although support for the decertification campaign is difficult to measure, it wouldn’t take much to make an impact in a state where elections are regularly decided by narrow margins. Mr. Ramthun is drawing crowds, and his campaign has already revived Republicans’ divisive debate over false claims of fraud in 2020. Nearly two-thirds of Wisconsin Republicans were not confident in the state’s 2020 presidential election results, according to an October poll from the Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee.
“This is just not what the Republican Party needs right now,” said Rob Swearingen, a Republican state representative from the conservative Northwoods. “We shouldn’t be fighting among ourselves about what happened, you know, a year and a half ago.”
Wisconsin has the nation’s most active decertification effort. In Arizona, a Republican state legislator running for secretary of state along with candidates for Congress have called for recalling the state’s electoral votes. In September, Mr. Trump wrote a letter to Georgia officials asking them to decertify Mr. Biden’s victory there, but no organized effort materialized.
In Wisconsin, the decertification push has Republican politics on its head. After more than a decade of Republican leaders marching in lock-step with their base, the party is hobbled by infighting and it’s Democrats who are aligned behind Gov. Tony Evers, who is seeking a second term in November.
“Republicans now are arguing over whether we want democracy or not,” Mr. Evers said in an interview on Friday.
Mr. Ramthun, a 64-year-old lawmaker who lives in a village of 2,000 people an hour northwest of Milwaukee, has ridden his decertification push to become a sudden folk hero to the party’s Trump wing. Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former adviser, has hosted Mr. Ramthun on his podcast. At party events, he shows off a 72-page presentation in which he claims, falsely, that legislators have the power to declare Wisconsin’s election results invalid and recall the state’s electoral votes.
Mr. Ramthun has received bigger applause at local Republican gatherings than the leading candidates for governor, and last weekend he joined the race himself, announcing his candidacy at a campaign kickoff where he was introduced by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has financed numerous efforts to undermine and overturn the 2020 election.
Mr. Trump offered public words of encouragement.
“Who in Wisconsin is leading the charge to decertify this fraudulent election?” the former president said in a statement.
It did not take long before the state’s top Republicans were responding to Mr. Ramthun’s election conspiracies. Within days, both of his Republican rivals for governor released new plans to strengthen partisan control of Wisconsin’s elections.
During a radio appearance on Thursday, former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, the party establishment’s preferred candidate, refused to admit that Mr. Biden won the 2020 election — something she had already conceded last September. Ms. Kleefisch declined to be interviewed.
Kevin Nicholson, a former Marine with backing from the right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, declined in an interview to say whether the election was legitimate, but he said there was “no legal path” to decertifying the results.
Mr. Vos spent nearly an hour Friday on a Milwaukee conservative talk radio show defending his opposition to decertification from skeptical callers.
“It is impossible — it cannot happen,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I can say that.”
Yet, Mr. Ramthun claims to have the grass-roots energy on his side. On Tuesday, he drew a crowd of about 250 people for a two-hour rally in the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Terry Brand, the Republican Party chairman in rural Langlade County, chartered a bus for two dozen people for the three-hour ride. Mr. Brand in January oversaw the first county G.O.P. condemnation of Mr. Vos, calling for the leader’s resignation for blocking the decertification effort. At the rally, Mr. Brand stood holding a sign that said “Toss Vos.”
“People are foaming at the mouth over this issue,” he said, listening intently as speakers offered both conspiracy theories and assurances to members of the crowd that they were of sound mind.
“You’re not crazy,” Janel Brandtjen, the chairwoman of the Assembly’s elections committee, told the crowd.
One speaker tied Mr. Vos, through a college roommate and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, to the false claims circulating in right-wing media that Hillary Clinton’s campaign spied on Mr. Trump. Another was introduced under a pseudonym, then promptly announced herself as a candidate for lieutenant governor.
The rally closed with remarks from Harry Wait, an organizer of a conservative group in Racine County called HOT Government, an acronym for honest, open and transparent.
“I want to remind everybody,” Mr. Wait said, “that yesterday’s conspiracies may be today’s reality.”
Mr. Ramthun says he has questioned the result of every presidential election in Wisconsin since 1996. (He does not make an exception for the one Republican victory in that period: Mr. Trump’s in 2016.) He has pledged to consider ending the use of voting machines and to conduct an “independent full forensic physical cyber audit” of the 2020 election — and also of the 2022 election, regardless of how it turns out.
Mr. Ramthun has adopted a biblical slogan — “Let there be light” — a reference to his claim that Mr. Vos is hiding the truth from voters. If Wisconsin pulls back its electoral votes, Mr. Ramthun said, other states may follow.
(American presidents can be removed from office only by impeachment or by a vote of the cabinet.)
All of this has become too much for Mr. Vos, who before the Trump era was a steady Republican foot soldier focused on taxes, spending and labor laws.
Mr. Vos has often appeased his party’s election conspiracists, expressing his own doubts about who really won in Wisconsin, calling for felony charges against Wisconsin’s top election administrators and authorizing an investigation into the 2020 election, which is still underway.
Now, even as he draws the line on decertification, Mr. Vos has tried to placate his base and plead for patience. He announced this week the Assembly plans to vote on a new package of voting bills. (Mr. Evers said in the interview on Friday that he would veto any new restrictions.)
“It’s simply a matter of misdirected anger,” he said, of the criticism he’s facing. “They have already assumed that the Democrats are hopeless, and now they are focused on those of us who are trying to get at the truth, hoping we do more.”
Other Republicans in the state are also walking a political tightrope — refusing to accept Mr. Biden’s victory while avoiding taking a position on Mr. Ramthun’s decertification effort.
“Evidence might be out there, that is something other people are working on,” said Ron Tusler, who sits on the Assembly’s elections committee. “It’s too early to be sure but it’s possible we try it later.”
State Senator Kathy Bernier is the only of Wisconsin’s 82 Republican state legislators who has made a public case that Mr. Trump lost the state fairly, without widespread fraud.
Ms. Bernier, the chairwoman of the State Senate’s elections committee, in November asked the Wisconsin Legislature’s attorneys to weigh in on the legality of decertifying an election — it is not possible, they said. In December, she called for an end to the Assembly’s investigation into 2020. Three weeks later, she announced she won’t seek re-election this year.
“I have no explanation as to why legislators want to pursue voter-fraud conspiracy theories that have not been proven,” Ms. Bernier said in an interview. “They should not do that. It’s dangerous to our democratic republic. They need to step back and only speak about things that they know and understand and can do. And outside of that, they should button it up.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/us/p ... 20Politics
TrumpReich in action
Re: TrumpReich in action
From WAPO Feb.18:
By Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor
Yesterday at 4:36 p.m. EST
"Another Trump judge has struck, in another bid to defang the Voting Rights Act. This decision wouldn’t ordinarily merit much notice — it’s a single opinion by a district court judge. But it offers stark evidence of Donald Trump’s toxic judicial legacy, illustrates how conservative justices invite legal mischief to bubble up from the lower courts, and threatens what remains of one of the country’s proudest legislative achievements.
The ruling came Thursday from U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky of Little Rock, a Harvard Law School graduate, Federalist Society member (of course) and former Arkansas solicitor general. Rudofsky found that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters against unfair redistricting or other voting practices that have discriminatory effects, can only be enforced by the Justice Department. No civil rights groups, no individual voters need apply — I mean, are entitled to file suit.
This radical interpretation flies in the face of the history, purpose and longtime interpretation of the Voting Rights Act; it ignores congressional intent and long-standing Supreme Court rulings. And, if it were to stand, it would all but guarantee that the protections of the Voting Rights Act would be meaningless whenever there is a Republican in the White House.
No judge has ever — ever — thrown out a Section 2 claim on the grounds that the law barred suits by private plaintiffs. Even Arkansas, whose newly redrawn state legislative district lines were at issue in the case before Rudofsky, didn’t make this argument. Rudofsky raised it on his own — and said he would toss the case unless the Justice Department decided to join it in the next five days.
This is part of an ugly pattern that has left the Voting Rights Act in tatters. In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority eviscerated Section 5 of the law, which required certain states to obtain advance approval for voting changes. That pretty much just left Section 2, which allows lawsuits after changes are enacted.
But last year, in an Arizona case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the high court engaged in a wholesale rewriting of Section 2 that drained it of effectiveness in cases involving voting rules and procedures. Just last week, intervening in an Alabama redistricting case, the court signaled new hostility to using Section 2 to challenge district lines that reduce the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice.
Rudofsky’s ruling is a direct outgrowth of Brnovich. The majority opinion was so egregious — it “mostly inhabits a law-free zone,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent — that hardly anyone paid attention to a concurring opinion by Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas that said it was “an open question” whether private parties could sue under Section 2.
As I’ve written before, the Gorsuch-Thomas concurrence was an especially dishonest piece of work. To buttress their bias against private suits, Gorsuch and Thomas cited a single appeals court case from 1981 that simply mentioned the issue. For decades, before and after a congressional rewrite of the law in 1982, the existence of a private right of action was assumed; Brnovich, which itself involved a lawsuit by a private party, cited nine other such cases. The question wasn’t ajar — not until Gorsuch and Thomas cracked it open.
Their gambit worked. When civil rights groups challenged Texas’s new voting law under Section 2, the state took up the Gorsuch-Thomas offer and argued that the plaintiffs didn’t have any right to sue. Texas lost, with the judge writing in December that “it would be ambitious indeed for a district court ... to deny a private right of action in the light of precedent and history.”
Not too ambitious for Rudofsky, who proclaimed he was just doing his job, even if it led to unfortunate results.
“The question,” he wrote, “is not whether the Court believes the Voting Rights Act has been and continues to be a force for good and progress in our society. (I do.) … The question is not whether the Court believes cases like this one are important to pursue. (I do.)
“The narrow question before the Court is only whether, under current Supreme Court precedent, a court should imply a private right of action to enforce § [Section] 2 of the Voting Rights Act where Congress has not expressly provided one. The answer to this narrow question is no.”
This is a crock, dressed up in legal frippery.
Rudofsky is correct about two things. Section 2 doesn’t explicitly contain a private right to sue. And in recent years, the court has been increasingly reluctant to find such authorization when the statutory text doesn’t include it.
That’s not the end of the story, though. As the Justice Department told Rudofsky in a filing, “long-standing case law, the structure of the Voting Rights Act, the Act’s broad enforcement provisions, and authoritative sources of congressional intent confirm that there is a private cause of action under Section 2 to challenge such redistricting plans.”
Rudofsky not only contorted the law to knock down each of these arguments — he went beyond what Gorsuch and Thomas had said to insist that he had to dismiss the case even though Arkansas hadn’t raised the issue.
Why does all this matter? Because Rudofsky might be just the start. Because the federal government has limited resources to bring these voting rights cases and, under Republican administrations, demonstrably limited interest in doing so. And because, as Kagan put it last week, “a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy” is increasingly being whittled into insignificance by activist judges who claim they are simply following the law, even as they strain to neuter it."
Voters who voted for the Nazi Party in 1930's Germany were complicit in the behaviour of that Party. As are GOP voters today, like it or not.
By Ruth Marcus
Deputy editorial page editor
Yesterday at 4:36 p.m. EST
"Another Trump judge has struck, in another bid to defang the Voting Rights Act. This decision wouldn’t ordinarily merit much notice — it’s a single opinion by a district court judge. But it offers stark evidence of Donald Trump’s toxic judicial legacy, illustrates how conservative justices invite legal mischief to bubble up from the lower courts, and threatens what remains of one of the country’s proudest legislative achievements.
The ruling came Thursday from U.S. District Judge Lee Rudofsky of Little Rock, a Harvard Law School graduate, Federalist Society member (of course) and former Arkansas solicitor general. Rudofsky found that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which protects minority voters against unfair redistricting or other voting practices that have discriminatory effects, can only be enforced by the Justice Department. No civil rights groups, no individual voters need apply — I mean, are entitled to file suit.
This radical interpretation flies in the face of the history, purpose and longtime interpretation of the Voting Rights Act; it ignores congressional intent and long-standing Supreme Court rulings. And, if it were to stand, it would all but guarantee that the protections of the Voting Rights Act would be meaningless whenever there is a Republican in the White House.
No judge has ever — ever — thrown out a Section 2 claim on the grounds that the law barred suits by private plaintiffs. Even Arkansas, whose newly redrawn state legislative district lines were at issue in the case before Rudofsky, didn’t make this argument. Rudofsky raised it on his own — and said he would toss the case unless the Justice Department decided to join it in the next five days.
This is part of an ugly pattern that has left the Voting Rights Act in tatters. In 2013’s Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority eviscerated Section 5 of the law, which required certain states to obtain advance approval for voting changes. That pretty much just left Section 2, which allows lawsuits after changes are enacted.
But last year, in an Arizona case, Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee, the high court engaged in a wholesale rewriting of Section 2 that drained it of effectiveness in cases involving voting rules and procedures. Just last week, intervening in an Alabama redistricting case, the court signaled new hostility to using Section 2 to challenge district lines that reduce the ability of minority voters to elect candidates of their choice.
Rudofsky’s ruling is a direct outgrowth of Brnovich. The majority opinion was so egregious — it “mostly inhabits a law-free zone,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent — that hardly anyone paid attention to a concurring opinion by Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas that said it was “an open question” whether private parties could sue under Section 2.
As I’ve written before, the Gorsuch-Thomas concurrence was an especially dishonest piece of work. To buttress their bias against private suits, Gorsuch and Thomas cited a single appeals court case from 1981 that simply mentioned the issue. For decades, before and after a congressional rewrite of the law in 1982, the existence of a private right of action was assumed; Brnovich, which itself involved a lawsuit by a private party, cited nine other such cases. The question wasn’t ajar — not until Gorsuch and Thomas cracked it open.
Their gambit worked. When civil rights groups challenged Texas’s new voting law under Section 2, the state took up the Gorsuch-Thomas offer and argued that the plaintiffs didn’t have any right to sue. Texas lost, with the judge writing in December that “it would be ambitious indeed for a district court ... to deny a private right of action in the light of precedent and history.”
Not too ambitious for Rudofsky, who proclaimed he was just doing his job, even if it led to unfortunate results.
“The question,” he wrote, “is not whether the Court believes the Voting Rights Act has been and continues to be a force for good and progress in our society. (I do.) … The question is not whether the Court believes cases like this one are important to pursue. (I do.)
“The narrow question before the Court is only whether, under current Supreme Court precedent, a court should imply a private right of action to enforce § [Section] 2 of the Voting Rights Act where Congress has not expressly provided one. The answer to this narrow question is no.”
This is a crock, dressed up in legal frippery.
Rudofsky is correct about two things. Section 2 doesn’t explicitly contain a private right to sue. And in recent years, the court has been increasingly reluctant to find such authorization when the statutory text doesn’t include it.
That’s not the end of the story, though. As the Justice Department told Rudofsky in a filing, “long-standing case law, the structure of the Voting Rights Act, the Act’s broad enforcement provisions, and authoritative sources of congressional intent confirm that there is a private cause of action under Section 2 to challenge such redistricting plans.”
Rudofsky not only contorted the law to knock down each of these arguments — he went beyond what Gorsuch and Thomas had said to insist that he had to dismiss the case even though Arkansas hadn’t raised the issue.
Why does all this matter? Because Rudofsky might be just the start. Because the federal government has limited resources to bring these voting rights cases and, under Republican administrations, demonstrably limited interest in doing so. And because, as Kagan put it last week, “a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy” is increasingly being whittled into insignificance by activist judges who claim they are simply following the law, even as they strain to neuter it."
Voters who voted for the Nazi Party in 1930's Germany were complicit in the behaviour of that Party. As are GOP voters today, like it or not.
Re: TrumpReich in action
3 Men Plead Guilty in Plot to Attack U.S. Power Grid
The men believed that by knocking out power across the country, economic and civil unrest would spread, creating the potential for a race war and the opportunity for white leaders to rise, prosecutors said.
By Jesus Jiménez
Feb. 23, 2022
Three men pleaded guilty on Wednesday in a plot to attack power grids in the United States, which they believed could lead to economic and civil unrest and create the opportunity for white leaders to rise, federal prosecutors said.
The men, Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Ind., and of Katy, Texas; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wis., each pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Wednesday to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
They will each face up to 15 years in prison when they are sentenced. A date has not been scheduled.
Kenneth Parker, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said in a statement on Wednesday that the three men “conspired to use violence to sow hate, create chaos, and endanger the safety of the American people.”
Timothy Langan, assistant director of the F.B.I. counterterrorism division, said in a statement that the three men expected their plot to lead to “economic distress and civil unrest.”
“These individuals wanted to carry out such a plot because of their adherence to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views,” Mr. Langan said.
Samuel Shamansky, a lawyer for Mr. Frost, said on Wednesday that Mr. Frost had “accepted complete responsibility for his reprehensible conduct.”
“He has completely disavowed the racist viewpoints previously embraced,” Mr. Shamansky said. “Regrettably, Mr. Frost fell prey to the misinformation espoused on the internet and now recognizes how dangerous the medium can be. Moreover, Mr. Frost has committed himself toward rehabilitation and doing everything within his power to remedy his misdeeds.”
Lawyers for Mr. Cook and Mr. Sawall declined to comment on Wednesday.
In fall 2019, Mr. Frost and Mr. Cook met in an online chat group, and they began talking about the possibility of attacking a power grid, according to plea agreements. Within weeks, the two men began making efforts to recruit others and began sharing reading material that promoted white supremacy and neo-Nazism. By late 2019, Mr. Sawall, a friend of Mr. Cook’s, also joined the efforts, prosecutors said.
As part of their plot, each man focused on substations in different regions of the country, and how to attack the power grids with rifles, according to court documents. The three men discussed that by knocking out power across the country for an extended period, civil unrest would spread, a race war could break out and the next Great Depression could be induced, according to court documents.
“People wouldn’t show up to work, the economy could crash and there would be a ripe opportunity for potential (white) leaders to rise up,” Mr. Cook’s plea agreement said. “One theme of the group discussions centered around the need to create disorder to bring the system down, which would cause people to doubt the system and create a true revolutionary force against the system.”
In February 2020, the three men met in Columbus for more talks about their plot, according to court documents. When they met, Mr. Frost gave Mr. Cook an AR-47, and the two men trained with the rifle at a shooting range, according to court documents.
Mr. Frost also gave Mr. Cook and Mr. Sawall suicide necklaces that he had filled with fentanyl, which were to be ingested if they were caught by the police, according to court documents.
While they were in Columbus, Mr. Sawall and Mr. Cook bought spray paint and used it to write the phrase “Join the Front” on a swastika flag under a bridge at a park, according to court documents. The men had more plans to spread propaganda while they were in Ohio until they encountered the police during a traffic stop, during which Mr. Sawall ingested his suicide necklace but survived, according to a plea agreement.
It was not immediately clear on Wednesday night why Mr. Sawall and Mr. Cook had been stopped by the police at that time. A call to federal prosecutors on Wednesday evening was not immediately returned.
The F.B.I. searched the homes of the three men in August 2020. Agents found multiple firearms, chemicals that could have been used to create an explosive device, and Nazi-related books and videos, according to court documents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/p ... e-war.html
The men believed that by knocking out power across the country, economic and civil unrest would spread, creating the potential for a race war and the opportunity for white leaders to rise, prosecutors said.
By Jesus Jiménez
Feb. 23, 2022
Three men pleaded guilty on Wednesday in a plot to attack power grids in the United States, which they believed could lead to economic and civil unrest and create the opportunity for white leaders to rise, federal prosecutors said.
The men, Christopher Brenner Cook, 20, of Columbus, Ohio; Jonathan Allen Frost, 24, of West Lafayette, Ind., and of Katy, Texas; and Jackson Matthew Sawall, 22, of Oshkosh, Wis., each pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Columbus on Wednesday to one count of conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.
They will each face up to 15 years in prison when they are sentenced. A date has not been scheduled.
Kenneth Parker, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, said in a statement on Wednesday that the three men “conspired to use violence to sow hate, create chaos, and endanger the safety of the American people.”
Timothy Langan, assistant director of the F.B.I. counterterrorism division, said in a statement that the three men expected their plot to lead to “economic distress and civil unrest.”
“These individuals wanted to carry out such a plot because of their adherence to racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist views,” Mr. Langan said.
Samuel Shamansky, a lawyer for Mr. Frost, said on Wednesday that Mr. Frost had “accepted complete responsibility for his reprehensible conduct.”
“He has completely disavowed the racist viewpoints previously embraced,” Mr. Shamansky said. “Regrettably, Mr. Frost fell prey to the misinformation espoused on the internet and now recognizes how dangerous the medium can be. Moreover, Mr. Frost has committed himself toward rehabilitation and doing everything within his power to remedy his misdeeds.”
Lawyers for Mr. Cook and Mr. Sawall declined to comment on Wednesday.
In fall 2019, Mr. Frost and Mr. Cook met in an online chat group, and they began talking about the possibility of attacking a power grid, according to plea agreements. Within weeks, the two men began making efforts to recruit others and began sharing reading material that promoted white supremacy and neo-Nazism. By late 2019, Mr. Sawall, a friend of Mr. Cook’s, also joined the efforts, prosecutors said.
As part of their plot, each man focused on substations in different regions of the country, and how to attack the power grids with rifles, according to court documents. The three men discussed that by knocking out power across the country for an extended period, civil unrest would spread, a race war could break out and the next Great Depression could be induced, according to court documents.
“People wouldn’t show up to work, the economy could crash and there would be a ripe opportunity for potential (white) leaders to rise up,” Mr. Cook’s plea agreement said. “One theme of the group discussions centered around the need to create disorder to bring the system down, which would cause people to doubt the system and create a true revolutionary force against the system.”
In February 2020, the three men met in Columbus for more talks about their plot, according to court documents. When they met, Mr. Frost gave Mr. Cook an AR-47, and the two men trained with the rifle at a shooting range, according to court documents.
Mr. Frost also gave Mr. Cook and Mr. Sawall suicide necklaces that he had filled with fentanyl, which were to be ingested if they were caught by the police, according to court documents.
While they were in Columbus, Mr. Sawall and Mr. Cook bought spray paint and used it to write the phrase “Join the Front” on a swastika flag under a bridge at a park, according to court documents. The men had more plans to spread propaganda while they were in Ohio until they encountered the police during a traffic stop, during which Mr. Sawall ingested his suicide necklace but survived, according to a plea agreement.
It was not immediately clear on Wednesday night why Mr. Sawall and Mr. Cook had been stopped by the police at that time. A call to federal prosecutors on Wednesday evening was not immediately returned.
The F.B.I. searched the homes of the three men in August 2020. Agents found multiple firearms, chemicals that could have been used to create an explosive device, and Nazi-related books and videos, according to court documents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/p ... e-war.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
3 GOP vote against Ukraine , the usual suspects:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/3-house-repu ... 57691.html
https://www.yahoo.com/news/3-house-repu ... 57691.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Texas GOP once again proves itself indistinguishable from Nazi Germany.Hopefully, there is a special place in Hell for Abbott, and more than enough reason now to boycott all that is Texan.
WAPO today:
Judge partially blocks Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse
By María Luisa Paúl and Casey Parks
Yesterday at 10:00 p.m. EST
A Texas judge on Wednesday partially blocked enforcement of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse, court documents show.
The decision by Judge Amy Clark Meachum stems from a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal, the LGBTQ legal advocacy group. The lawsuit seeks to block a statewide directive ordering the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFSP) to investigate parents who allow their children to medically transition genders for possible crimes.
Meachum’s ruling grants a temporary restraining order to the plaintiffs represented in the case, but it does not prevent Texas from investigating other parents. The judge will consider that question in an additional hearing on March 11.
Within hours of the ruling, the state appealed the decision in what Lambda Legal counsel Omar Gonzalez-Pagan called a “very unusual, cruel and frankly, extraordinary move.”
“They’re seeking an appeal for a temporary restraining order that applies only to four plaintiffs,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “It is a cruel and punitive zealousness with which the Texas governor and attorney general are proceeding to persecute transgender youth and their families. It is reprehensible and should really cause alarm for everybody.”
The offices of the state’s attorney general and the governor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the lawsuit, officials had begun investigating parents of transgender kids one week after Abbott (R) directed the state’s health agencies to handle certain gender-affirming treatments as crimes.
In his letter, the governor noted that the Office of the Attorney General, Ken Paxton, had determined that providing medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy could “legally constitute child abuse” under Texas law.
“I hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas,” Abbott wrote to the commissioner of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Among the families the department had began probing, the lawsuit shows, was a mother who works for the department responsible for the investigations. According to documents filed in Travis County district court, Jane Doe is an employee of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Her 16-year-old daughter, Mary Doe, is transgender and has been receiving medical care from the same pediatrician for most of her life. After her pediatrician diagnosed her with gender dysphoria, she has received treatments that include puberty blockers and hormone therapy to initiate a female puberty.
The day after Abbott issued his order, Jane Doe was placed on leave from the Department of Family and Protective Services, court documents say. Two days later, a child protective services investigator visited the family’s home, court documents say, and interviewed both parents. They also interviewed Mary Doe separately from her parents.
The family is now living in “constant fear,” court documents say. Jane Doe is unable to sleep, and Mary, who is typically joyful, is now moody, stressed and overwhelmed.
“Mary has been traumatized by the prospect that she could be separated from her parents and could lose access to the medical treatment that has enabled her to thrive,” court documents say.
Megan A. Mooney, a Houston-based psychologist who has worked for two decades with families and children, is also a plaintiff. Many of her clients are transgender and nonbinary children. The governor’s directive puts her in “an untenable situation,” court documents say. If she does not report her clients, she could lose her license or face civil and criminal penalties. If she does report them, court documents say, “she faces even more damaging personal and professional consequences.”
After hearing the attorneys’ arguments on Wednesday, Meachum found that the plaintiffs “will suffer irreparable injury unless Defendants are immediately restrained from enforcing the Governor’s letter and the DFPS statement,” according to the court order.
By enforcing the directive, the document read, the plaintiffs would face “the imminent and ongoing deprivation of their constitutional rights, the potential loss of necessary medical care, and the stigma attached to being the subject of an unfounded child abuse investigation.” Mooney would be subjected to immediate criminal prosecution, as stipulated in Abbott’s letter.
Abbott’s directive, however, does not change Texas law. While the state’s child welfare agency is apparently investigating claims, the Dallas Morning News reported last week that some county and district attorneys have said they will not enforce the opinion.
Much like the state’s strict abortion ban, the order empowers private citizens in its enforcement — mostly relying on ordinary Texans to report suspected violations. Yet it requires groups — such as teachers and doctors — who are already forced to report what they say to be child abuse, to do so.
President Biden on Wednesday decried Abbott’s actions as “government overreach at its worst” — announcing that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will take new actions to help transgender youth in Texas and their families.
“Children, their parents, and their doctors should have the freedom to make the medical decisions that are best for each young person — without politicians getting the way,” Biden said in a statement.
Still, while the case’s attorneys were able to secure — at least momentarily — protection from the order for their clients, they fear the ramifications the governor’s push could have for families across the state and across the country.
“They’re using the lives of vulnerable youth in their state as a political football,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “Every family in Texas right now with a transgender youth that they support and affirm is living in fear. That’s unlawful and we will continue to fight their actions.”
WAPO today:
Judge partially blocks Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse
By María Luisa Paúl and Casey Parks
Yesterday at 10:00 p.m. EST
A Texas judge on Wednesday partially blocked enforcement of Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to treat gender-affirming care as child abuse, court documents show.
The decision by Judge Amy Clark Meachum stems from a lawsuit filed on Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and Lambda Legal, the LGBTQ legal advocacy group. The lawsuit seeks to block a statewide directive ordering the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFSP) to investigate parents who allow their children to medically transition genders for possible crimes.
Meachum’s ruling grants a temporary restraining order to the plaintiffs represented in the case, but it does not prevent Texas from investigating other parents. The judge will consider that question in an additional hearing on March 11.
Within hours of the ruling, the state appealed the decision in what Lambda Legal counsel Omar Gonzalez-Pagan called a “very unusual, cruel and frankly, extraordinary move.”
“They’re seeking an appeal for a temporary restraining order that applies only to four plaintiffs,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “It is a cruel and punitive zealousness with which the Texas governor and attorney general are proceeding to persecute transgender youth and their families. It is reprehensible and should really cause alarm for everybody.”
The offices of the state’s attorney general and the governor did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to the lawsuit, officials had begun investigating parents of transgender kids one week after Abbott (R) directed the state’s health agencies to handle certain gender-affirming treatments as crimes.
In his letter, the governor noted that the Office of the Attorney General, Ken Paxton, had determined that providing medical treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy could “legally constitute child abuse” under Texas law.
“I hereby direct your agency to conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas,” Abbott wrote to the commissioner of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
Among the families the department had began probing, the lawsuit shows, was a mother who works for the department responsible for the investigations. According to documents filed in Travis County district court, Jane Doe is an employee of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Her 16-year-old daughter, Mary Doe, is transgender and has been receiving medical care from the same pediatrician for most of her life. After her pediatrician diagnosed her with gender dysphoria, she has received treatments that include puberty blockers and hormone therapy to initiate a female puberty.
The day after Abbott issued his order, Jane Doe was placed on leave from the Department of Family and Protective Services, court documents say. Two days later, a child protective services investigator visited the family’s home, court documents say, and interviewed both parents. They also interviewed Mary Doe separately from her parents.
The family is now living in “constant fear,” court documents say. Jane Doe is unable to sleep, and Mary, who is typically joyful, is now moody, stressed and overwhelmed.
“Mary has been traumatized by the prospect that she could be separated from her parents and could lose access to the medical treatment that has enabled her to thrive,” court documents say.
Megan A. Mooney, a Houston-based psychologist who has worked for two decades with families and children, is also a plaintiff. Many of her clients are transgender and nonbinary children. The governor’s directive puts her in “an untenable situation,” court documents say. If she does not report her clients, she could lose her license or face civil and criminal penalties. If she does report them, court documents say, “she faces even more damaging personal and professional consequences.”
After hearing the attorneys’ arguments on Wednesday, Meachum found that the plaintiffs “will suffer irreparable injury unless Defendants are immediately restrained from enforcing the Governor’s letter and the DFPS statement,” according to the court order.
By enforcing the directive, the document read, the plaintiffs would face “the imminent and ongoing deprivation of their constitutional rights, the potential loss of necessary medical care, and the stigma attached to being the subject of an unfounded child abuse investigation.” Mooney would be subjected to immediate criminal prosecution, as stipulated in Abbott’s letter.
Abbott’s directive, however, does not change Texas law. While the state’s child welfare agency is apparently investigating claims, the Dallas Morning News reported last week that some county and district attorneys have said they will not enforce the opinion.
Much like the state’s strict abortion ban, the order empowers private citizens in its enforcement — mostly relying on ordinary Texans to report suspected violations. Yet it requires groups — such as teachers and doctors — who are already forced to report what they say to be child abuse, to do so.
President Biden on Wednesday decried Abbott’s actions as “government overreach at its worst” — announcing that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will take new actions to help transgender youth in Texas and their families.
“Children, their parents, and their doctors should have the freedom to make the medical decisions that are best for each young person — without politicians getting the way,” Biden said in a statement.
Still, while the case’s attorneys were able to secure — at least momentarily — protection from the order for their clients, they fear the ramifications the governor’s push could have for families across the state and across the country.
“They’re using the lives of vulnerable youth in their state as a political football,” Gonzalez-Pagan said. “Every family in Texas right now with a transgender youth that they support and affirm is living in fear. That’s unlawful and we will continue to fight their actions.”
Re: TrumpReich in action
Tragic,but actually true.not satire.
Borowitz Report today:
Putin Clarifies That His Ban on Journalists Does Not Include Tucker Carlson
MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—After placing strict bans on journalists’ coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin clarified that any ban on journalists did not include Tucker Carlson.
“When it was reported that I was limiting the reporting of journalists, some may have misconstrued that to include Tucker,” Putin said. “To the contrary, I am an enormous fan of his work and want him to continue doing what he’s doing.”
“It pains me to think that I might have unintentionally insulted Tucker Carlson,” he said. “His work has given me great joy.”
Putin said that he was issuing his clarification out of an abundance of caution. “I had thought that it was clear that I didn’t mean Tucker Carlson when I said ‘journalists,’ ” he said.
Borowitz Report today:
Putin Clarifies That His Ban on Journalists Does Not Include Tucker Carlson
MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—After placing strict bans on journalists’ coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin clarified that any ban on journalists did not include Tucker Carlson.
“When it was reported that I was limiting the reporting of journalists, some may have misconstrued that to include Tucker,” Putin said. “To the contrary, I am an enormous fan of his work and want him to continue doing what he’s doing.”
“It pains me to think that I might have unintentionally insulted Tucker Carlson,” he said. “His work has given me great joy.”
Putin said that he was issuing his clarification out of an abundance of caution. “I had thought that it was clear that I didn’t mean Tucker Carlson when I said ‘journalists,’ ” he said.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Brilliant.Rach3 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 3:28 pmTragic,but actually true.not satire.
Borowitz Report today:
Putin Clarifies That His Ban on Journalists Does Not Include Tucker Carlson
MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—After placing strict bans on journalists’ coverage of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin clarified that any ban on journalists did not include Tucker Carlson.
“When it was reported that I was limiting the reporting of journalists, some may have misconstrued that to include Tucker,” Putin said. “To the contrary, I am an enormous fan of his work and want him to continue doing what he’s doing.”
“It pains me to think that I might have unintentionally insulted Tucker Carlson,” he said. “His work has given me great joy.”
Putin said that he was issuing his clarification out of an abundance of caution. “I had thought that it was clear that I didn’t mean Tucker Carlson when I said ‘journalists,’ ” he said.
Re: TrumpReich in action
WAPO tonight:
Eenjoy it’ if rape is inevitable
Robert Regan, a Republican favored to win a seat in the Michigan House, made the comments while trying to make an analogy about abandoning efforts to decertify the 2020 election
By Mariana Alfaro
Today at 3:17 p.m. EST
A Republican candidate favored to win a seat in the Michigan House said he tells his daughters to “just lie back and enjoy it” if raped, as he attempted to make an analogy about abandoning efforts to decertify the results of the 2020 election.
Robert Regan, who is running to represent Michigan’s District 74 in the state legislature, made the comments during a Facebook live stream Sunday. The discussion was hosted by the Rescue Michigan Coalition, a conservative group that supports former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The Justice Department found no evidence to support Trump’s baseless allegations.
During the discussion, fellow panelist Amber Harris, a Republican strategist, told the group that it is “too late” to continue challenging the results of the 2020 election, suggesting Republicans should instead move on and focus on future races, to which Regan replied: “I tell my daughters, ‘Well, if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.’ ”
Regan then moved on to other comparisons, drawing a parallel between his recent victory in the Republican primary and the biblical story of David and Goliath.
A shocked Harris, however, tried to cut in as Regan and the discussion’s host, Rescue Michigan Coalition founder Adam de Angeli, moved on. When de Angeli gave Harris the chance to speak, she said Regan’s comments were “shameful.”
“I’ve got advice to give to your daughters: Don’t do that,” Harris said. “Fight all the time.”
Regan’s three daughters urged voters not to elect him to office in a viral tweet during his 2020 bid for the state House.
“If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone,” Stephanie Regan wrote on Twitter.
Regan, who last week advanced to the general election after winning the special Republican primary by 81 votes, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. On Monday, he told Bridge Michigan, a local news outlet, that “sometimes” his words “aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician.”
“I’m working on it,” Regan said. “The only reason the left trolls attack you is because they know you’re directly over the target, dropping direct hits on an issue. If you’re not scoring hits, they leave you alone.”
He said his comments on rape and the election only meant “nothing is inevitable.”
De Angeli told The Washington Post in an email conversation Tuesday that it was clear to him that Regan was “speaking extemporaneously.”
“Upon reviewing the video, I think he was actually talking about the 2020 election and saying that Republicans shouldn’t concede that Biden won fairly,” De Angeli said, adding that Regan apologized for his comment.
During the discussion, Regan also said that, if elected, he’d push for the decertification of the results of the 2020 election in Michigan. Under both state and federal law, a state can’t decertify an election.
“We do want to decertify this election and we do want it returned to the rightful owner, just like if someone stole your car or stole your jewelry,” Regan said. “It goes back to the rightful owner. You decertify and you give it to the rightful owner, and that’s Donald Trump, and that’s what I’m pushing for and we’re going full-bore on that.”
Other comments by Regan surfaced online after a clip of the live stream went viral, including a 2021 Instagram post from the candidate in which he claimed that feminism is a “Jewish program to degrade and subjugate White men.” Regan has also called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “fake war just like the fake pandemic.”
Regan’s comments drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, with Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock calling them “offensive and disappointing.”
“I’d like to think he didn’t mean what he said,” Maddock told Bridge Michigan. “If I could control what our candidates say all the time, that would be a great thing.”
The state party’s other co-chair, Ron Weiser, a former U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, also criticized Regan.
“Mr. Regan’s history of foolish, egregious and offensive comments, including his most recent one are simply beyond the pale,” Weiser said in a statement. “We are better than this as a Party and I absolutely expect better than this of our candidates.”
Still, the party leaders did not call for Regan to drop out of the race.
Jason C. Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan, said that while the group of people who continue to say that “we should re-litigate 2020 is shrinking,” the “obsession” among some Republicans in his state with a forensic audit of the presidential election is going to cause the party to miss out on “historic” gains in the next election.
“Increasingly, I think there’s a lot of frustration that we’re giving away our opportunities statewide, and I think this adds to the problems,” Roe said of Regan’s controversy. Regan, he said, is still poised to win this year’s election, but once the district is redrawn, “he’s gone.”
Regan will face Democrat Carol Glanville, Walker City commissioner, in a May 3 special election to fill the vacant Michigan House seat in the state’s Kent County.
The chair of the state’s Democratic Party, Lavora Barnes, said in a statement Monday that the state’s GOP should denounce Regan’s remarks and make clear that the 2020 presidential election will not be decertified.
“This type of language is disgusting and Michigan Republicans have got to stand up and denounce Regan’s remarks and what his candidacy represents,” Barnes said. “If they don’t, Regan will be the face of the Michigan Republican Party. His extreme views and reckless comments on the Russian invasion, 2020 election results and now rape show he is totally unfit for office.”
In 2012, Republican Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.) lost his bid for the U.S. Senate after a remark about “legitimate rape” that touched off an outcry among Republicans and Democrats. Akin, an abortion rights opponent, had suggested in an interview that women’s bodies could stop a pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.” “The female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said.
Eenjoy it’ if rape is inevitable
Robert Regan, a Republican favored to win a seat in the Michigan House, made the comments while trying to make an analogy about abandoning efforts to decertify the 2020 election
By Mariana Alfaro
Today at 3:17 p.m. EST
A Republican candidate favored to win a seat in the Michigan House said he tells his daughters to “just lie back and enjoy it” if raped, as he attempted to make an analogy about abandoning efforts to decertify the results of the 2020 election.
Robert Regan, who is running to represent Michigan’s District 74 in the state legislature, made the comments during a Facebook live stream Sunday. The discussion was hosted by the Rescue Michigan Coalition, a conservative group that supports former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The Justice Department found no evidence to support Trump’s baseless allegations.
During the discussion, fellow panelist Amber Harris, a Republican strategist, told the group that it is “too late” to continue challenging the results of the 2020 election, suggesting Republicans should instead move on and focus on future races, to which Regan replied: “I tell my daughters, ‘Well, if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.’ ”
Regan then moved on to other comparisons, drawing a parallel between his recent victory in the Republican primary and the biblical story of David and Goliath.
A shocked Harris, however, tried to cut in as Regan and the discussion’s host, Rescue Michigan Coalition founder Adam de Angeli, moved on. When de Angeli gave Harris the chance to speak, she said Regan’s comments were “shameful.”
“I’ve got advice to give to your daughters: Don’t do that,” Harris said. “Fight all the time.”
Regan’s three daughters urged voters not to elect him to office in a viral tweet during his 2020 bid for the state House.
“If you’re in Michigan and 18+ pls for the love of god do not vote for my dad for state rep. Tell everyone,” Stephanie Regan wrote on Twitter.
Regan, who last week advanced to the general election after winning the special Republican primary by 81 votes, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. On Monday, he told Bridge Michigan, a local news outlet, that “sometimes” his words “aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician.”
“I’m working on it,” Regan said. “The only reason the left trolls attack you is because they know you’re directly over the target, dropping direct hits on an issue. If you’re not scoring hits, they leave you alone.”
He said his comments on rape and the election only meant “nothing is inevitable.”
De Angeli told The Washington Post in an email conversation Tuesday that it was clear to him that Regan was “speaking extemporaneously.”
“Upon reviewing the video, I think he was actually talking about the 2020 election and saying that Republicans shouldn’t concede that Biden won fairly,” De Angeli said, adding that Regan apologized for his comment.
During the discussion, Regan also said that, if elected, he’d push for the decertification of the results of the 2020 election in Michigan. Under both state and federal law, a state can’t decertify an election.
“We do want to decertify this election and we do want it returned to the rightful owner, just like if someone stole your car or stole your jewelry,” Regan said. “It goes back to the rightful owner. You decertify and you give it to the rightful owner, and that’s Donald Trump, and that’s what I’m pushing for and we’re going full-bore on that.”
Other comments by Regan surfaced online after a clip of the live stream went viral, including a 2021 Instagram post from the candidate in which he claimed that feminism is a “Jewish program to degrade and subjugate White men.” Regan has also called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a “fake war just like the fake pandemic.”
Regan’s comments drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, with Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock calling them “offensive and disappointing.”
“I’d like to think he didn’t mean what he said,” Maddock told Bridge Michigan. “If I could control what our candidates say all the time, that would be a great thing.”
The state party’s other co-chair, Ron Weiser, a former U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, also criticized Regan.
“Mr. Regan’s history of foolish, egregious and offensive comments, including his most recent one are simply beyond the pale,” Weiser said in a statement. “We are better than this as a Party and I absolutely expect better than this of our candidates.”
Still, the party leaders did not call for Regan to drop out of the race.
Jason C. Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan, said that while the group of people who continue to say that “we should re-litigate 2020 is shrinking,” the “obsession” among some Republicans in his state with a forensic audit of the presidential election is going to cause the party to miss out on “historic” gains in the next election.
“Increasingly, I think there’s a lot of frustration that we’re giving away our opportunities statewide, and I think this adds to the problems,” Roe said of Regan’s controversy. Regan, he said, is still poised to win this year’s election, but once the district is redrawn, “he’s gone.”
Regan will face Democrat Carol Glanville, Walker City commissioner, in a May 3 special election to fill the vacant Michigan House seat in the state’s Kent County.
The chair of the state’s Democratic Party, Lavora Barnes, said in a statement Monday that the state’s GOP should denounce Regan’s remarks and make clear that the 2020 presidential election will not be decertified.
“This type of language is disgusting and Michigan Republicans have got to stand up and denounce Regan’s remarks and what his candidacy represents,” Barnes said. “If they don’t, Regan will be the face of the Michigan Republican Party. His extreme views and reckless comments on the Russian invasion, 2020 election results and now rape show he is totally unfit for office.”
In 2012, Republican Rep. Todd Akin (Mo.) lost his bid for the U.S. Senate after a remark about “legitimate rape” that touched off an outcry among Republicans and Democrats. Akin, an abortion rights opponent, had suggested in an interview that women’s bodies could stop a pregnancy in cases of “legitimate rape.” “The female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” Akin said.
Re: TrumpReich in action
They are all quite mad.
Never forget.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
From WAPO today, Missouri to ban out-of - State abortions
The measure could signal a new strategy by the antiabortion movement to extend its influence beyond the GOP-led states poised to enact tighter restrictions if the Supreme Court weakens its landmark precedent upholding abortion rights.
By Caroline Kitchener
Yesterday at 2:21 p.m. EST
The pattern emerges whenever a Republican-led state imposes new restrictions on abortion: People seeking the procedure cross state lines to find treatment in places with less-restrictive laws.
Now, a prominent antiabortion lawmaker in Missouri, from where thousands of residents have traveled to next-door Illinois to receive abortions since Missouri passed one of the country’s strictest abortion laws in 2019, believes she has found a solution.
An unusual new provision, introduced by state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman (R), would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion out of state, using the novel legal strategy behind the restrictive law in Texas that since September has banned abortions in that state after six weeks of pregnancy.
Coleman has attached the measure as an amendment to several abortion-related bills that have made it through committee and are waiting to be heard on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Abortion rights advocates say the measure is unconstitutional because it would effectively allow states to enact laws beyond their jurisdictions, but the Republican-led Missouri legislature has been supportive of creative approaches to antiabortion legislation in the past. The measure could signal a new strategy by the antiabortion movement to extend its influence beyond the conservative states poised to tighten restrictions if the Supreme Court moves this summer to overturn its landmark precedent protecting abortion rights.
“If your neighboring state doesn’t have pro-life protections, it minimizes the ability to protect the unborn in your state,” said Coleman, who said she’s been trying to figure out how to crack down on out-of-state abortions since Planned Parenthood opened an abortion clinic on the Illinois-Missouri border in 2019.
A Supreme Court decision that undercuts Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion across the United States, probably would create a national landscape that encourages patients to cross state lines for abortions, with Democrat-led states moving to protect abortion rights as Republican-led states further limit them.
The trend has been apparent in Texas, where the majority of people seeking abortions since the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect in September have been able to obtain the procedure at clinics in neighboring states, or by ordering abortion pills in the mail, according to a report from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. Demand for abortions has skyrocketed in Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and other nearby states. Planned Parenthood clinics in states that border Texas reported that patient traffic increased by nearly 800 percent, and independent providers reported comparable increases.
Since Planned Parenthood opened its clinic on the Missouri-Illinois border in October 2019, 10,644 Missouri residents have received abortion care at the clinic, according to Planned Parenthood. By early 2021, the last remaining clinic in Missouri was typically providing between 10 and 20 abortions per month, according to preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Health.
Coleman said she hopes her amendment will thwart efforts by Missourians to cross state lines for abortions. The measure would target anyone even tangentially involved in an abortion performed on a Missouri resident, including the hotline staffers who make the appointments, the marketing representatives who advertise out-of-state clinics, and the Illinois and Kansas-based doctors who handle the procedure. Her amendment also would make it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess or distribute abortion pills in Missouri.
Olivia Cappello, the press officer for state media campaigns at Planned Parenthood, called the idea “wild” and “bonkers.” She called the proposal “the most extraordinary provision we have ever seen.”
If enacted, the measure almost certainly would face a swift legal challenge.
Elizabeth Myers, an attorney for Texas abortion rights groups in a court challenge to the six-week abortion ban, said states cannot regulate activities beyond their borders. She drew a parallel to marijuana laws, which also vary from state to state: While Texas lawmakers can outlaw marijuana, and punish anyone who uses the drug within Texas borders, she said, they have no jurisdiction over a Texas resident who uses marijuana in a state where its use is legal.
“A state’s power is over its own citizens and its own geographical boundaries,” Myers said. “These are limits imposed by the federal constitution and federal law.”
Coleman’s proposal still may succeed in deterring out-of-state abortions, said Myers. Like the Texas law, the proposal itself could have a chilling effect, where doctors in surrounding states stop performing abortions before courts have an opportunity to intervene, worried that they may face a flurry of lawsuits if they violate the law.
Coleman rejects arguments that her law is unconstitutional.
“That’s what they said about the Texas law, and every bill passed to protect the unborn for the last 49 years,” she said.
Coleman prayed outside the clinic on the Illinois-Missouri border on the day it opened, she said. Since then, she said, she’s been talking to “anyone who would listen” about legal strategies for decreasing the number of Missouri women who seek abortions in other states.
While Coleman says she has been happy to see the sharp decline in abortions in Missouri, she says she can’t fully celebrate the success when so many women are obtaining the same procedure a few miles away.
“It’s just tragic,” she said of the number of Missouri residents who get abortions in Illinois. “It feels very sad and heavy.”
Abortion clinics in states that support abortion rights are preparing for a surge of new patients if Roe is overturned. They are opening new locations and advocating for legislation that would allow them to accommodate more people. Lawmakers in several states have proposed bills this session that would allow nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to perform abortions, in addition to physicians, while others are planning to create statewide databases that will allow out-of-state patients to more easily plan their abortion care.
“We’ve got already half of states that have passed some kind of law to restrict or eliminate abortion access,” said California state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D), who has introduced legislation to help make California a “sanctuary state” for people seeking abortion access. “We definitely are and intend to be a national beacon for reproductive freedom and reproductive justice.”
The measure could signal a new strategy by the antiabortion movement to extend its influence beyond the GOP-led states poised to enact tighter restrictions if the Supreme Court weakens its landmark precedent upholding abortion rights.
By Caroline Kitchener
Yesterday at 2:21 p.m. EST
The pattern emerges whenever a Republican-led state imposes new restrictions on abortion: People seeking the procedure cross state lines to find treatment in places with less-restrictive laws.
Now, a prominent antiabortion lawmaker in Missouri, from where thousands of residents have traveled to next-door Illinois to receive abortions since Missouri passed one of the country’s strictest abortion laws in 2019, believes she has found a solution.
An unusual new provision, introduced by state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman (R), would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a Missouri resident obtain an abortion out of state, using the novel legal strategy behind the restrictive law in Texas that since September has banned abortions in that state after six weeks of pregnancy.
Coleman has attached the measure as an amendment to several abortion-related bills that have made it through committee and are waiting to be heard on the floor of the House of Representatives.
Abortion rights advocates say the measure is unconstitutional because it would effectively allow states to enact laws beyond their jurisdictions, but the Republican-led Missouri legislature has been supportive of creative approaches to antiabortion legislation in the past. The measure could signal a new strategy by the antiabortion movement to extend its influence beyond the conservative states poised to tighten restrictions if the Supreme Court moves this summer to overturn its landmark precedent protecting abortion rights.
“If your neighboring state doesn’t have pro-life protections, it minimizes the ability to protect the unborn in your state,” said Coleman, who said she’s been trying to figure out how to crack down on out-of-state abortions since Planned Parenthood opened an abortion clinic on the Illinois-Missouri border in 2019.
A Supreme Court decision that undercuts Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling legalizing abortion across the United States, probably would create a national landscape that encourages patients to cross state lines for abortions, with Democrat-led states moving to protect abortion rights as Republican-led states further limit them.
The trend has been apparent in Texas, where the majority of people seeking abortions since the state’s six-week abortion ban took effect in September have been able to obtain the procedure at clinics in neighboring states, or by ordering abortion pills in the mail, according to a report from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. Demand for abortions has skyrocketed in Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and other nearby states. Planned Parenthood clinics in states that border Texas reported that patient traffic increased by nearly 800 percent, and independent providers reported comparable increases.
Since Planned Parenthood opened its clinic on the Missouri-Illinois border in October 2019, 10,644 Missouri residents have received abortion care at the clinic, according to Planned Parenthood. By early 2021, the last remaining clinic in Missouri was typically providing between 10 and 20 abortions per month, according to preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Health.
Coleman said she hopes her amendment will thwart efforts by Missourians to cross state lines for abortions. The measure would target anyone even tangentially involved in an abortion performed on a Missouri resident, including the hotline staffers who make the appointments, the marketing representatives who advertise out-of-state clinics, and the Illinois and Kansas-based doctors who handle the procedure. Her amendment also would make it illegal to manufacture, transport, possess or distribute abortion pills in Missouri.
Olivia Cappello, the press officer for state media campaigns at Planned Parenthood, called the idea “wild” and “bonkers.” She called the proposal “the most extraordinary provision we have ever seen.”
If enacted, the measure almost certainly would face a swift legal challenge.
Elizabeth Myers, an attorney for Texas abortion rights groups in a court challenge to the six-week abortion ban, said states cannot regulate activities beyond their borders. She drew a parallel to marijuana laws, which also vary from state to state: While Texas lawmakers can outlaw marijuana, and punish anyone who uses the drug within Texas borders, she said, they have no jurisdiction over a Texas resident who uses marijuana in a state where its use is legal.
“A state’s power is over its own citizens and its own geographical boundaries,” Myers said. “These are limits imposed by the federal constitution and federal law.”
Coleman’s proposal still may succeed in deterring out-of-state abortions, said Myers. Like the Texas law, the proposal itself could have a chilling effect, where doctors in surrounding states stop performing abortions before courts have an opportunity to intervene, worried that they may face a flurry of lawsuits if they violate the law.
Coleman rejects arguments that her law is unconstitutional.
“That’s what they said about the Texas law, and every bill passed to protect the unborn for the last 49 years,” she said.
Coleman prayed outside the clinic on the Illinois-Missouri border on the day it opened, she said. Since then, she said, she’s been talking to “anyone who would listen” about legal strategies for decreasing the number of Missouri women who seek abortions in other states.
While Coleman says she has been happy to see the sharp decline in abortions in Missouri, she says she can’t fully celebrate the success when so many women are obtaining the same procedure a few miles away.
“It’s just tragic,” she said of the number of Missouri residents who get abortions in Illinois. “It feels very sad and heavy.”
Abortion clinics in states that support abortion rights are preparing for a surge of new patients if Roe is overturned. They are opening new locations and advocating for legislation that would allow them to accommodate more people. Lawmakers in several states have proposed bills this session that would allow nurse practitioners and nurse midwives to perform abortions, in addition to physicians, while others are planning to create statewide databases that will allow out-of-state patients to more easily plan their abortion care.
“We’ve got already half of states that have passed some kind of law to restrict or eliminate abortion access,” said California state Sen. Nancy Skinner (D), who has introduced legislation to help make California a “sanctuary state” for people seeking abortion access. “We definitely are and intend to be a national beacon for reproductive freedom and reproductive justice.”
Re: TrumpReich in action
From WAPO tonight:
"Florida is discouraging parents from vaccinating healthy children against the coronavirus, contradicting guidance from federal health authorities. The state released official guidance Tuesday that said the risks of administering the coronavirus vaccine may outweigh the benefits. The guidance comes a day after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced the new state policy, prompting outcry from public health experts who called it “reckless” and “dangerous.”
Although federal health authorities no longer recommend masking for the vast majority of the country now that coronavirus cases are declining, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that mask requirements in schools did reduce cases of covid-19 during the delta surge. In a large study released Tuesday, the CDC looked at 233 school districts in the United States and found that those with mask requirements had a 23 percent lower incidence of cases of covid-19. The authors concluded that masks remain an important tool to prevent the spread in schools, particularly in communities with high levels of disease.
The omicron surge is over in the United States, but the variant is still infecting tens of thousands of Americans each day and made up 100 percent of new infections during the week ending March 5, the CDC stated."
"Florida is discouraging parents from vaccinating healthy children against the coronavirus, contradicting guidance from federal health authorities. The state released official guidance Tuesday that said the risks of administering the coronavirus vaccine may outweigh the benefits. The guidance comes a day after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced the new state policy, prompting outcry from public health experts who called it “reckless” and “dangerous.”
Although federal health authorities no longer recommend masking for the vast majority of the country now that coronavirus cases are declining, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that mask requirements in schools did reduce cases of covid-19 during the delta surge. In a large study released Tuesday, the CDC looked at 233 school districts in the United States and found that those with mask requirements had a 23 percent lower incidence of cases of covid-19. The authors concluded that masks remain an important tool to prevent the spread in schools, particularly in communities with high levels of disease.
The omicron surge is over in the United States, but the variant is still infecting tens of thousands of Americans each day and made up 100 percent of new infections during the week ending March 5, the CDC stated."
Re: TrumpReich in action
The inmates are working real hard at taking over the asylum.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Reason 4789 to avoid Missouri:
Per Kansas City Star this am:
"Missouri House approves concealed carry of weapons on public transportation, in churches."
Per Kansas City Star this am:
"Missouri House approves concealed carry of weapons on public transportation, in churches."
Re: TrumpReich in action
Reason 4790 per Kansas City Star tonight:
Planned Parenthood sues Missouri, alleging state poised to unlawfully withhold funds.
Republican lawmakers are trying to kick Planned Parenthood out of Missouri’s Medicaid program.
Re: TrumpReich in action
From NYT today:
Koch Industries continues doing business in Russia
Judd Legum
Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, has numerous ongoing business operations in Russia. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Koch Industries has given no indications that those business operations have been suspended. On the contrary, the limited public comments made by Koch subsidiaries operating in Russia indicate that their business activities have continued.
Guardian Industries, for example, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, acquired in 2017. Guardian, a manufacturer of industrial glass and other products, is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan but has production facilities around the world.
Guardian has two glass production plants that operate in Russia. One facility is in Ryazan, Russia, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow. The company added "a new jumbo laminated glass production line" to that facility in August 2021. Another facility is located in Rostov, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. The Rostov plant, which began operations about a decade ago, cost $220 million to build and produces "Guardian’s high-performance, energy-efficient ClimaGuard(R) (residential) and SunGuard(R) (commercial) glass products for construction of homes, offices, retail, health-care and other facilities." It is capable of producing "900 tons of glass per day."
"Guardian is bullish on Russia given the excellent growth at our first plant in Ryazan and the customers we have in the country. The timing is right for the region and for Guardian," the company said in 2011, shortly before the Rostov plant opened.
Earlier this month, a Guardian spokesperson indicated its employees are continuing to work at its Russian facilities after the invasion of Ukraine. Alexandra Birladianu, head of corporate communication at Guardian, provided this statement to USGlass Magazine on March 4:
Guardian Industries continues to closely monitor the tumultuous events in Eastern Europe, supporting our employees who are affected. The health and safety of our employees and all personnel working at our facilities is our first priority
Popular Information contacted Guardian, both directly and through Koch Industries, and requested comment on its operations in Russia. The company did not respond.
Guardian is one of three Koch Industries subsidiaries with operations in Russia, according to the Koch Industries corporate website:
Hundreds of international companies have suspended their operations in Russia, seeking to pressure Putin to end his assault on Ukraine through economic isolation. Koch Industries has apparently taken a different course.
The Russian operations of Koch subsidiary Molex
Molex is an electronic components manufacturer that was acquired by Koch Industries in 2013. Molex offers its products through a network of third-party distributors across Russia and offers a version of its corporate website in Russian.
It has posted two letters regarding "business continuity" in Eastern Europe. The first letter, posted February 25, 2022, says the company is "monitoring the ongoing developments between Russia and Ukraine." It says that the company is "actively monitoring our existing land, sea and air carriers with routes traversing Ukraine and Russia." Further, "route adjustments have been initiated to mitigate product disruptions between Molex and our customers."
The second letter, posted March 1, 2022, is identical except "ongoing developments between Russia and Ukraine" has been changed to "ongoing developments in Eastern Europe." The words "Russia and Ukraine" were also removed from the header of the letter.
Popular Information contacted Molex, both directly and through Koch Industries, and requested comment on its operations in Russia. The company did not respond.
The Russian operations of Koch Engineered Solutions
Koch-Glitsch, one of a series of affiliated companies that operate as Koch Engineered Solutions, provides industrial products for the "chemical, petrochemical, refining, gas processing, pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries." The company maintains a sales office in Moscow.
The company has a history of using creative practices to evade sanctions. When the U.S. government banned "American companies from selling materials to Iran," Koch-Glitsch used subsidiaries in Germany and Italy to continue selling its products. Those sales continued until 2007. “Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” George Bentu, a former sales engineer for Koch-Glitsch, told Bloomberg News in 2011. The sales "may not have violated the law if no U.S. people or company divisions facilitated trades with Iran."
Neither Koch-Glitsch or Koch Engineered Solutions has publicly commented on the Russian attack on Ukraine. Several requests for comment by Popular Information were not returned.
Does Charles Koch care about Russian human rights violations?
Charles Koch's alleged indifference to Russian human rights violations sparked a controversy at the Atlantic Council, an elite think tank based in Washington, DC.
The trouble started when two Atlantic Council experts, Emma Ashford and Mathew Burrows, wrote an article arguing that "the U.S. should not focus on human rights in its dealings with Russia." The piece argued that the U.S. should not have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to the Kremlin's poisoning and attempted assassination of opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
More than 20 Atlantic Council staffers published a response criticizing the piece as misguided. One of the signatories told Politico that "they worried the article was… influenced by a $4.5 million donation over five years to the Atlantic Council from Charles Koch." Not long after the donation, Ashford joined the Atlantic Council from "the Koch-funded libertarian think tank the Cato Institute."
The signatory, who was not identified, said that the "Koch industry operates as a Trojan horse operation trying to destroy good institutions and they have pretty much the same views as the Russians." Other Atlantic Council staffers claimed Ashford and Burrows "were only hired because of the Koch money that the Atlantic Council received." Fred Kempe, CEO of the Atlantic Council, called the allegation "outrageous."
Today, numerous Koch subsidiaries continue to do business with Russia as its military increasingly targets civilians in Ukraine.Dan Caldwell, senior vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together, a group founded and funded by Charles Koch, has expressed skepticism about the actions taken by the United States — including sanctions and military assistance, to counter Russian aggression. On Twitter, Caldwell has suggested the United States should stop supporting Ukraine (by declaring "neutrality") and described sanctions as misguided."I am extremely concerned that some of these policies being pushed from policymakers on both sides of the aisle will put us on a path toward a conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia," Caldwell told the New York Times.
Koch Industries continues doing business in Russia
Judd Legum
Koch Industries, the conglomerate run by right-wing billionaire Charles Koch, has numerous ongoing business operations in Russia. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Koch Industries has given no indications that those business operations have been suspended. On the contrary, the limited public comments made by Koch subsidiaries operating in Russia indicate that their business activities have continued.
Guardian Industries, for example, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries, acquired in 2017. Guardian, a manufacturer of industrial glass and other products, is based in Auburn Hills, Michigan but has production facilities around the world.
Guardian has two glass production plants that operate in Russia. One facility is in Ryazan, Russia, about 120 miles southeast of Moscow. The company added "a new jumbo laminated glass production line" to that facility in August 2021. Another facility is located in Rostov, Russia, near the border with Ukraine. The Rostov plant, which began operations about a decade ago, cost $220 million to build and produces "Guardian’s high-performance, energy-efficient ClimaGuard(R) (residential) and SunGuard(R) (commercial) glass products for construction of homes, offices, retail, health-care and other facilities." It is capable of producing "900 tons of glass per day."
"Guardian is bullish on Russia given the excellent growth at our first plant in Ryazan and the customers we have in the country. The timing is right for the region and for Guardian," the company said in 2011, shortly before the Rostov plant opened.
Earlier this month, a Guardian spokesperson indicated its employees are continuing to work at its Russian facilities after the invasion of Ukraine. Alexandra Birladianu, head of corporate communication at Guardian, provided this statement to USGlass Magazine on March 4:
Guardian Industries continues to closely monitor the tumultuous events in Eastern Europe, supporting our employees who are affected. The health and safety of our employees and all personnel working at our facilities is our first priority
Popular Information contacted Guardian, both directly and through Koch Industries, and requested comment on its operations in Russia. The company did not respond.
Guardian is one of three Koch Industries subsidiaries with operations in Russia, according to the Koch Industries corporate website:
Hundreds of international companies have suspended their operations in Russia, seeking to pressure Putin to end his assault on Ukraine through economic isolation. Koch Industries has apparently taken a different course.
The Russian operations of Koch subsidiary Molex
Molex is an electronic components manufacturer that was acquired by Koch Industries in 2013. Molex offers its products through a network of third-party distributors across Russia and offers a version of its corporate website in Russian.
It has posted two letters regarding "business continuity" in Eastern Europe. The first letter, posted February 25, 2022, says the company is "monitoring the ongoing developments between Russia and Ukraine." It says that the company is "actively monitoring our existing land, sea and air carriers with routes traversing Ukraine and Russia." Further, "route adjustments have been initiated to mitigate product disruptions between Molex and our customers."
The second letter, posted March 1, 2022, is identical except "ongoing developments between Russia and Ukraine" has been changed to "ongoing developments in Eastern Europe." The words "Russia and Ukraine" were also removed from the header of the letter.
Popular Information contacted Molex, both directly and through Koch Industries, and requested comment on its operations in Russia. The company did not respond.
The Russian operations of Koch Engineered Solutions
Koch-Glitsch, one of a series of affiliated companies that operate as Koch Engineered Solutions, provides industrial products for the "chemical, petrochemical, refining, gas processing, pharmaceutical and specialty chemical industries." The company maintains a sales office in Moscow.
The company has a history of using creative practices to evade sanctions. When the U.S. government banned "American companies from selling materials to Iran," Koch-Glitsch used subsidiaries in Germany and Italy to continue selling its products. Those sales continued until 2007. “Every single chance they had to do business with Iran, or anyone else, they did,” George Bentu, a former sales engineer for Koch-Glitsch, told Bloomberg News in 2011. The sales "may not have violated the law if no U.S. people or company divisions facilitated trades with Iran."
Neither Koch-Glitsch or Koch Engineered Solutions has publicly commented on the Russian attack on Ukraine. Several requests for comment by Popular Information were not returned.
Does Charles Koch care about Russian human rights violations?
Charles Koch's alleged indifference to Russian human rights violations sparked a controversy at the Atlantic Council, an elite think tank based in Washington, DC.
The trouble started when two Atlantic Council experts, Emma Ashford and Mathew Burrows, wrote an article arguing that "the U.S. should not focus on human rights in its dealings with Russia." The piece argued that the U.S. should not have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to the Kremlin's poisoning and attempted assassination of opposition figure Alexei Navalny.
More than 20 Atlantic Council staffers published a response criticizing the piece as misguided. One of the signatories told Politico that "they worried the article was… influenced by a $4.5 million donation over five years to the Atlantic Council from Charles Koch." Not long after the donation, Ashford joined the Atlantic Council from "the Koch-funded libertarian think tank the Cato Institute."
The signatory, who was not identified, said that the "Koch industry operates as a Trojan horse operation trying to destroy good institutions and they have pretty much the same views as the Russians." Other Atlantic Council staffers claimed Ashford and Burrows "were only hired because of the Koch money that the Atlantic Council received." Fred Kempe, CEO of the Atlantic Council, called the allegation "outrageous."
Today, numerous Koch subsidiaries continue to do business with Russia as its military increasingly targets civilians in Ukraine.Dan Caldwell, senior vice president for foreign policy at Stand Together, a group founded and funded by Charles Koch, has expressed skepticism about the actions taken by the United States — including sanctions and military assistance, to counter Russian aggression. On Twitter, Caldwell has suggested the United States should stop supporting Ukraine (by declaring "neutrality") and described sanctions as misguided."I am extremely concerned that some of these policies being pushed from policymakers on both sides of the aisle will put us on a path toward a conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia," Caldwell told the New York Times.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Some oligarchs here and elsewhere have no moral compass.
Re: TrumpReich in action
The Root
Mostly-Black Town In Tennessee Loses Financial Control Just As Millions of Dollars Roll In
Keith Reed
Thu, March 17, 2022, 4:05 PM
With Tennessee Senator Jon Lundberg’s dog, Nash, keeping an eye on the proceedings, Tennessee Deputy Comptroller Jason Mumpower speaks at the 2019 Regional Legislative Breakfast Friday, Jan. 11, 2019. Mumpower this week assumed control of the finances of Mason, Tenn., a small, mostly-black town that sits adjacent to the site of a multi-billion-dollar new auto plant planned by Ford Motor Co.
A tiny, majority-Black town in Tennessee which was poised to benefit from a massive investment from Ford Motor Company has instead been taken over by the state’s comptroller.
Mason, Tenn., has about 1,500 residents. Most of its elected officials are Black and members of the Democratic party, in stark contrast with the mostly-white and Republican-controlled Tipton County government as well as Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower, who on Tuesday took the step of seizing control of Mason’s finances.
Mumpower’s power grab comes after he’d given Mason’s government a choice between relinquishing its charter–essentially giving away control of the town to Tipton County–or having him step in and assume control of the municipality’s budget and spending powers. According to Tennessee Lookout, a local government watchdog website, Mumpower says the move was necessary to address financial mismanagement in Mason.
But the city’s elected officials aren’t so sure about that.
From Tennessee Lookout:
Mason officials have pushed back on Mumpower’s assessment. The town ended up in a half-million-dollar financial hole caused in large part by fraud and embezzlement during prior administrations, Rivers said. Rivers said she and other officials have been working hard to pay off debts accrued under those previous administrations.
Rivers and other town officials have questioned why Mumpower or other state officials did not intervene before now. Mason, which still serves as home to descendants of freed slaves, was led by White officials for more than a century. The town’s first Black Mayor, Gwen Kilpatrick, assumed office in 2015 after allegations of fraud and mismanagement led to the resignations of nearly all City Hall officials, who were White. Mason residents have elected Black leaders ever since. Mason’s current mayor, vice mayor and five of its six aldermen are Black.
Automotive giant Ford is planning to invest a reported $5.6 billion in a massive new electric vehicle and battery facility dubbed Blue Oval City, which will sit just four miles from Mason. According to the Tennessee Lookout story, the main highway between Memphis and Blue Oval City, as well as a rail line and other critical infrastructure run right through Mason.
That puts Mason likely on the cusp of a huge windfall in tax and development revenues, none of which its elected mayor or city council will control with Mumpower in charge.
The situation recalls other incidents of white officials moving to take control of municipal spending from Black ones.
In 2018, the public development authority in Duquesne, Pa., transferred $1.3 million from the city’s development funds to a private nonprofit entity controlled by an all-white board that included former city officials, just before the city’s first Black woman mayor, Nickole Nesby was sworn into office. Duquesne, a Pittsburgh suburb, sued to get the money back and its city council agreed to a settlement that allowed the money to stay with the private group while having the city appoint someone to its board of directors. Nesby opposed the deal.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mostly- ... 00591.html
--------------
16 Republicans oppose House bill on educating the public on Japanese American incarceration during WWII.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-republica ... 34636.html
Mostly-Black Town In Tennessee Loses Financial Control Just As Millions of Dollars Roll In
Keith Reed
Thu, March 17, 2022, 4:05 PM
With Tennessee Senator Jon Lundberg’s dog, Nash, keeping an eye on the proceedings, Tennessee Deputy Comptroller Jason Mumpower speaks at the 2019 Regional Legislative Breakfast Friday, Jan. 11, 2019. Mumpower this week assumed control of the finances of Mason, Tenn., a small, mostly-black town that sits adjacent to the site of a multi-billion-dollar new auto plant planned by Ford Motor Co.
A tiny, majority-Black town in Tennessee which was poised to benefit from a massive investment from Ford Motor Company has instead been taken over by the state’s comptroller.
Mason, Tenn., has about 1,500 residents. Most of its elected officials are Black and members of the Democratic party, in stark contrast with the mostly-white and Republican-controlled Tipton County government as well as Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower, who on Tuesday took the step of seizing control of Mason’s finances.
Mumpower’s power grab comes after he’d given Mason’s government a choice between relinquishing its charter–essentially giving away control of the town to Tipton County–or having him step in and assume control of the municipality’s budget and spending powers. According to Tennessee Lookout, a local government watchdog website, Mumpower says the move was necessary to address financial mismanagement in Mason.
But the city’s elected officials aren’t so sure about that.
From Tennessee Lookout:
Mason officials have pushed back on Mumpower’s assessment. The town ended up in a half-million-dollar financial hole caused in large part by fraud and embezzlement during prior administrations, Rivers said. Rivers said she and other officials have been working hard to pay off debts accrued under those previous administrations.
Rivers and other town officials have questioned why Mumpower or other state officials did not intervene before now. Mason, which still serves as home to descendants of freed slaves, was led by White officials for more than a century. The town’s first Black Mayor, Gwen Kilpatrick, assumed office in 2015 after allegations of fraud and mismanagement led to the resignations of nearly all City Hall officials, who were White. Mason residents have elected Black leaders ever since. Mason’s current mayor, vice mayor and five of its six aldermen are Black.
Automotive giant Ford is planning to invest a reported $5.6 billion in a massive new electric vehicle and battery facility dubbed Blue Oval City, which will sit just four miles from Mason. According to the Tennessee Lookout story, the main highway between Memphis and Blue Oval City, as well as a rail line and other critical infrastructure run right through Mason.
That puts Mason likely on the cusp of a huge windfall in tax and development revenues, none of which its elected mayor or city council will control with Mumpower in charge.
The situation recalls other incidents of white officials moving to take control of municipal spending from Black ones.
In 2018, the public development authority in Duquesne, Pa., transferred $1.3 million from the city’s development funds to a private nonprofit entity controlled by an all-white board that included former city officials, just before the city’s first Black woman mayor, Nickole Nesby was sworn into office. Duquesne, a Pittsburgh suburb, sued to get the money back and its city council agreed to a settlement that allowed the money to stay with the private group while having the city appoint someone to its board of directors. Nesby opposed the deal.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mostly- ... 00591.html
--------------
16 Republicans oppose House bill on educating the public on Japanese American incarceration during WWII.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/16-republica ... 34636.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Borowitz Report today :
Senate Republicans accused Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson of having been nominated by President Biden.
Senator Mitch McConnell called Ketanji Brown Jackson’s apparent ties to President Biden “gravely troubling.”
Senate Republicans accused Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson of having been nominated by President Biden.
Senator Mitch McConnell called Ketanji Brown Jackson’s apparent ties to President Biden “gravely troubling.”
Re: TrumpReich in action
From Yahoo News today, another good reason ( number 56987 ) to boycott all that is South Carolina:
"During the second day of Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Sen. Lindsey Graham grilled the nominee on her faith and judicial record before storming off during a back and forth about detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
Graham has made it clear from the very beginning that he is not supportive of Jackson's nomination over South Carolina's J. Michelle Childs.
Just a day ago, Graham said Childs' nomination was botched by the "radical left" wing of the Democratic Party and that he and Sen. Tim Scott and several other GOP lawmakers would have supported the judge.
"The attacks from the Left against Judge Childs was really pretty vicious, to be honest with you," Graham said to Jackson.
"So you say Judge Jackson, you don't have any judicial philosophy per se. Well, somebody on the left believes you do, or they went and spent the money to have you in this chair," Graham continued, making unverified statements of dark money groups bankrolling Jackson's candidature.
Graham rounded up GOP grievances and said that conservatives are focusing more on philosophy than someone's "race" Graham added that Democrats and the press hounded other nominees Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett during their hearings.
"The media will be your biggest cheerleader. They're in your camp," Graham said. "They have every right to pick who they want to pick. There won't be this constant attack on you like judge Kavanaugh and other conservative judicial appointments.
"They won't be any questioning of where you go to church. What kind of groups you're in in church, how you decide to raise your kids, what you believe in how you believe in God, nobody's gonna do that," Graham said to Jackson.
"And that's a good thing. So you're the beneficiary of a lot. You're the beneficiary of Republican nominees having their life turned upside down, and it didn't work."
During his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh was accused of sexually harassing Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology.
Last year, Politico reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation received 4,500 tips but chose not to investigate it and sent them to the White House instead. In a letter, an FBI official said that she was concerned that the Trump administration may have under investigated or dismissed the tips on Kavanaugh.
GOP grievances on faith and terrorism appear in Graham's line of questioning
A day after telling Jackson that she would not be 'vilified' for her views on her faith, Graham spent a lot of time circling her faith and how she engages with it in her daily life.
"On a scale of one to ten, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?" Graham asked.
Jackson said that she was a non-denominational Protestant and that her faith was very important to her.
"But as you know there’s no religious test in the Constitution," Jackson said, continuing that she was "reluctant" to talk about her faith in public interest and the groups who expected her to separate her personal views from her work.
The flashpoint of the hearing came when Graham focused on Jackson's record as a public defender for Guantanamo Bay detainees and how she had referred to the Bush administration as "war criminals" in a brief written years ago and also said that Gitmo, a shortened name for the detention camp, had a high recidivism rate.
Here, Dick Durbin, D-IL, the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair intervened and added context to Graham's statements.
"On the issue of Guantanamo, 39 detainees remain. It’s $450 million per year. Each of these detainees is being held at the expense of $12 or $13 million per year. If they would be incarcerated in Florence, Colorado, the supermax federal prison, the amount would be dramatically less," Durbin said. "Since 2009, with the beginning of the Obama Administration, the repeat rate of Guantanamo detainees is 5 percent.”
Graham directed his ire towards Durbin and asked the Democrat if he supported the detention of Gitmo prisoners.
Several international and domestic human rights groups have said that Guantanamo Bay, though aimed to detain 9/11 suspects, has been in the center of violating the Third Geneva Convention, the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture (CAT), and customary international law, which includes violations such as illegal and indefinite detention, torture, inhumane conditions and unfair trials (military commissions).
During the heated argument, Jackson said that her job as a public defender for the detainees was enshrined in the constitution.
In response, Graham said, "As long as they're dangerous, I hope they all die in jail if they're going to go back to kill Americans. It won't bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison. That's a better outcome than letting them go and if it cost $500 million to keep them in jail, keep them in jail because they'll go back to the fight. Look at the freaking Afghan government made up of former detainees at Gitmo. This whole thing by the left about this war ain't working!”
After that, the senator stormed out and said that Jackson's answers raised "red flags" for him, hinting that he would not vote for the nominee, even as he's voted to nominate her to the Circuit Court before.
If picked, Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, would be the sixth woman, and the first Black woman to preside over the high court.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Sen. Lindsey Graham storms off during the SCOTUS nominee hearing
"During the second day of Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, Sen. Lindsey Graham grilled the nominee on her faith and judicial record before storming off during a back and forth about detainees in Guantanamo Bay.
Graham has made it clear from the very beginning that he is not supportive of Jackson's nomination over South Carolina's J. Michelle Childs.
Just a day ago, Graham said Childs' nomination was botched by the "radical left" wing of the Democratic Party and that he and Sen. Tim Scott and several other GOP lawmakers would have supported the judge.
"The attacks from the Left against Judge Childs was really pretty vicious, to be honest with you," Graham said to Jackson.
"So you say Judge Jackson, you don't have any judicial philosophy per se. Well, somebody on the left believes you do, or they went and spent the money to have you in this chair," Graham continued, making unverified statements of dark money groups bankrolling Jackson's candidature.
Graham rounded up GOP grievances and said that conservatives are focusing more on philosophy than someone's "race" Graham added that Democrats and the press hounded other nominees Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett during their hearings.
"The media will be your biggest cheerleader. They're in your camp," Graham said. "They have every right to pick who they want to pick. There won't be this constant attack on you like judge Kavanaugh and other conservative judicial appointments.
"They won't be any questioning of where you go to church. What kind of groups you're in in church, how you decide to raise your kids, what you believe in how you believe in God, nobody's gonna do that," Graham said to Jackson.
"And that's a good thing. So you're the beneficiary of a lot. You're the beneficiary of Republican nominees having their life turned upside down, and it didn't work."
During his confirmation hearing, Kavanaugh was accused of sexually harassing Christine Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology.
Last year, Politico reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation received 4,500 tips but chose not to investigate it and sent them to the White House instead. In a letter, an FBI official said that she was concerned that the Trump administration may have under investigated or dismissed the tips on Kavanaugh.
GOP grievances on faith and terrorism appear in Graham's line of questioning
A day after telling Jackson that she would not be 'vilified' for her views on her faith, Graham spent a lot of time circling her faith and how she engages with it in her daily life.
"On a scale of one to ten, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?" Graham asked.
Jackson said that she was a non-denominational Protestant and that her faith was very important to her.
"But as you know there’s no religious test in the Constitution," Jackson said, continuing that she was "reluctant" to talk about her faith in public interest and the groups who expected her to separate her personal views from her work.
The flashpoint of the hearing came when Graham focused on Jackson's record as a public defender for Guantanamo Bay detainees and how she had referred to the Bush administration as "war criminals" in a brief written years ago and also said that Gitmo, a shortened name for the detention camp, had a high recidivism rate.
Here, Dick Durbin, D-IL, the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair intervened and added context to Graham's statements.
"On the issue of Guantanamo, 39 detainees remain. It’s $450 million per year. Each of these detainees is being held at the expense of $12 or $13 million per year. If they would be incarcerated in Florence, Colorado, the supermax federal prison, the amount would be dramatically less," Durbin said. "Since 2009, with the beginning of the Obama Administration, the repeat rate of Guantanamo detainees is 5 percent.”
Graham directed his ire towards Durbin and asked the Democrat if he supported the detention of Gitmo prisoners.
Several international and domestic human rights groups have said that Guantanamo Bay, though aimed to detain 9/11 suspects, has been in the center of violating the Third Geneva Convention, the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention Against Torture (CAT), and customary international law, which includes violations such as illegal and indefinite detention, torture, inhumane conditions and unfair trials (military commissions).
During the heated argument, Jackson said that her job as a public defender for the detainees was enshrined in the constitution.
In response, Graham said, "As long as they're dangerous, I hope they all die in jail if they're going to go back to kill Americans. It won't bother me one bit if 39 of them die in prison. That's a better outcome than letting them go and if it cost $500 million to keep them in jail, keep them in jail because they'll go back to the fight. Look at the freaking Afghan government made up of former detainees at Gitmo. This whole thing by the left about this war ain't working!”
After that, the senator stormed out and said that Jackson's answers raised "red flags" for him, hinting that he would not vote for the nominee, even as he's voted to nominate her to the Circuit Court before.
If picked, Jackson, a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, would be the sixth woman, and the first Black woman to preside over the high court.
This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Sen. Lindsey Graham storms off during the SCOTUS nominee hearing
Re: TrumpReich in action
A GOP Specialty: Bad Senate Candidates
Eric Greitens may be the only Republican who could lose in Missouri.
By The Editorial Board
Updated March 22, 2022 6:58 pm ET
The importance of a U.S. Senate majority is on display this week as Democrats rally to confirm Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee. Perhaps Republicans should consider the point before nominating another lousy Senate candidate in a race they should win.
Witness Eric Greitens, who is running for the open Senate seat in Missouri. In 2018 he resigned as Governor amid allegations he’d sexually coerced a hairdresser and photographed her bound and nude as blackmail if she divulged the affair. Mr. Greitens’s ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, has alleged in court documents that Mr. Greitens physically abused her and their sons, in addition to isolating them in a lake house, and repeatedly threatening suicide to force Ms. Greitens to publicly support him.
Mr. Greitens denies the allegations, and child-custody fights aren’t known for factual restraint. His supporters note that the St. Louis Circuit Attorney who filed a criminal charge against him in February 2018 over the photograph was a Democrat—and that she later dropped the charge. They say proof of the photo never materialized; the hairdresser testified that Mr. Greitens told her he’d erased it.
But Mr. Greitens created the circumstances of this mess. In January 2018 he admitted the affair with the hairdresser, even as he rejected her blackmail claims. In her court filing, Ms. Greitens says Mr. Greitens told her that he’d taken the photo. This backs up the hairdresser’s claim that was made under oath.
A Republican Missouri House led the investigation into the allegations and found Mr. Greitens’s behavior disturbing enough to threaten impeachment. Republican Senator Josh Hawley, then Missouri’s Attorney General, separately accused Mr. Greitens of using a donor list for his veteran’s charity to raise money for his gubernatorial bid.
That led to a charge of felony computer-tampering, which was dismissed as part of Mr. Greitens’s agreement with St. Louis prosecutors to leave office. Perhaps Mr. Greitens is the target of some vast conspiracy, but this truck load of baggage would follow him if he wins the party nomination.
The Greitens problem is a reminder that Republicans have a special talent for nominating bad Senate candidates. Recall Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell (“I’m not a witch”) in 2010; Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock (both with incendiary comments on rape) in 2012; and Alabama’s Roy Moore, who lost a special election in 2017 after accusations of inappropriate sexual contact with underage girls.
Mr. Greitens is seeking an endorsement from Donald Trump to provide an edge in a crowded GOP primary field. Don Jr.’s fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle is backing Mr. Greitens. The former President has been known to pick some turkeys, such as Pennsylvania’s Sean Parnell, who ended his Senate campaign last year amid allegations of spousal abuse.
The Senate election stakes are high this year, with a 50-50 split, and an urgent need for Republicans to lead the Biden Administration on defense spending and energy security. This should be a good GOP year, but bad candidates could cost them dearly.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gop-spec ... opin_pos_1
Eric Greitens may be the only Republican who could lose in Missouri.
By The Editorial Board
Updated March 22, 2022 6:58 pm ET
The importance of a U.S. Senate majority is on display this week as Democrats rally to confirm Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee. Perhaps Republicans should consider the point before nominating another lousy Senate candidate in a race they should win.
Witness Eric Greitens, who is running for the open Senate seat in Missouri. In 2018 he resigned as Governor amid allegations he’d sexually coerced a hairdresser and photographed her bound and nude as blackmail if she divulged the affair. Mr. Greitens’s ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, has alleged in court documents that Mr. Greitens physically abused her and their sons, in addition to isolating them in a lake house, and repeatedly threatening suicide to force Ms. Greitens to publicly support him.
Mr. Greitens denies the allegations, and child-custody fights aren’t known for factual restraint. His supporters note that the St. Louis Circuit Attorney who filed a criminal charge against him in February 2018 over the photograph was a Democrat—and that she later dropped the charge. They say proof of the photo never materialized; the hairdresser testified that Mr. Greitens told her he’d erased it.
But Mr. Greitens created the circumstances of this mess. In January 2018 he admitted the affair with the hairdresser, even as he rejected her blackmail claims. In her court filing, Ms. Greitens says Mr. Greitens told her that he’d taken the photo. This backs up the hairdresser’s claim that was made under oath.
A Republican Missouri House led the investigation into the allegations and found Mr. Greitens’s behavior disturbing enough to threaten impeachment. Republican Senator Josh Hawley, then Missouri’s Attorney General, separately accused Mr. Greitens of using a donor list for his veteran’s charity to raise money for his gubernatorial bid.
That led to a charge of felony computer-tampering, which was dismissed as part of Mr. Greitens’s agreement with St. Louis prosecutors to leave office. Perhaps Mr. Greitens is the target of some vast conspiracy, but this truck load of baggage would follow him if he wins the party nomination.
The Greitens problem is a reminder that Republicans have a special talent for nominating bad Senate candidates. Recall Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell (“I’m not a witch”) in 2010; Missouri’s Todd Akin and Indiana’s Richard Mourdock (both with incendiary comments on rape) in 2012; and Alabama’s Roy Moore, who lost a special election in 2017 after accusations of inappropriate sexual contact with underage girls.
Mr. Greitens is seeking an endorsement from Donald Trump to provide an edge in a crowded GOP primary field. Don Jr.’s fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle is backing Mr. Greitens. The former President has been known to pick some turkeys, such as Pennsylvania’s Sean Parnell, who ended his Senate campaign last year amid allegations of spousal abuse.
The Senate election stakes are high this year, with a 50-50 split, and an urgent need for Republicans to lead the Biden Administration on defense spending and energy security. This should be a good GOP year, but bad candidates could cost them dearly.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-gop-spec ... opin_pos_1
Re: TrumpReich in action
The next Secy. of State if Trump is re-elected ?
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reido ... -rcna21353
https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reido ... -rcna21353
Re: TrumpReich in action
To Wisconsin,Missouri,Kansas,South Dakota,Texas,Oklahoma,Alabama,Mississippi,Wyoming,Florida,Tennessee,Ohio, now add Idaho to boycott:
https://www.postalley.org/2022/03/28/fi ... s-for-now/
" Hike to waterfalls. Savor local cuisine. Explore wild forests. Paddle the best whitewater in the country. You can do all this in Idaho, and for those of us who live in neighboring Washington state, it’s all just a drive or a short flight away. The capital of Boise, with its network of bike paths, brew pubs and unique Basque heritage and food, has been on my list from before the pandemic.
So why am I not writing about the five best reasons to visit a state that has so much to offer? Sadly, I’ve come up instead with five reasons why NOT to spend a vacation in Idaho, or for that matter, Florida, Arizona, or Texas. All share efforts by state legislators to push for new laws criminalizing what many of us consider our rights as American citizens and measures to protect our health and the health of others.
Not all Idaho residents or business owners support a recent string of extreme actions by Republican lawmakers, but enough voters do to get these legislators reelected. Consider too the lack of response when Idaho’s Lieut. Gov. Janice McGeachin spoke recently at the white nationalist America First Political Action conference. “Unfortunately, Idaho’s business organizations have been largely silent,” wrote Tara Malek, a former Kootenai County prosecutor and the co-owner of Smith + Malek law firm, in the Idaho Capital Sun. Malek sees the rise of extremist ideology turned-into-law as a “threat to business, industry and economic opportunity in our state.”
She’s right. If we believe in voting with our feet, we won’t leave any footprints in Idaho this year. Here are five reasons why:
No. 1: Idaho Gov. Brad Little this week signed into law legislation that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and allow potential family members to sue a doctor who performs them after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. This Texas copy-cat law was passed by both houses.
The law allows the father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles of a “preborn child” to each sue an abortion provider for a minimum of $20,000 in damages within four years after the abortion. Rapists can’t file a lawsuit under the law, but a rapist’s relatives could. The law is scheduled to take effect 30 days after the signing although court challenges are expected.
No. 2: A bill passed by the Idaho House would make it a crime for most employers to require a coronavirus vaccine or make an employee disclose their vaccination status. If passed into law, it would become a misdemeanor for employers to refuse to hire or to fire someone for not being vaccinated for a coronavirus or any vaccine made available under an emergency use authorization. It would also become illegal to refuse to hire or to fire an employee for refusing to disclose their vaccination status. Each violation of the bill would be punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.
This comes in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country and whose hospitals not long ago were so overwhelmed with Covid cases that they had to offload patients to health care facilities in Utah, Washington, and other states.
No. 3: In killing a bill that would have made gender-affirming care a felony, Senate Republicans said they “strongly” oppose “any and all gender reassignment and surgical manipulation of the natural sex” on minors. They pulled the plug because they agreed that the legislation “undermines” a parent’s right to make medical decisions for their children,” but it passed the House by a nearly party-line vote that would have made it a felony — punishable by up to life in prison — to provide minors with hormones, puberty blockers, or gender-affirming surgery.
No. 4: Idaho librarians would face jail time for lending “harmful” books if some house lawmakers got their way. The proposed bill appears dead in the Senate, but passed 51-14 in the House. Its Republican sponsor claimed it was a necessary way to protect children from what she claims are obscene and pornographic books in libraries across the state.
No. 5: Idaho has some of the nation’s most liberal gun laws. Residents do not need a permit to open-carry. That goes for state parks, restaurants, bars, and other places tourists might go. Tell me how hiking near or being seated in a restaurant next to a stranger packing a gun is supposed to make me feel safe.
Could things change? I think so. I’d like to make that trip to Boise and beyond. Just not right now."
https://www.postalley.org/2022/03/28/fi ... s-for-now/
" Hike to waterfalls. Savor local cuisine. Explore wild forests. Paddle the best whitewater in the country. You can do all this in Idaho, and for those of us who live in neighboring Washington state, it’s all just a drive or a short flight away. The capital of Boise, with its network of bike paths, brew pubs and unique Basque heritage and food, has been on my list from before the pandemic.
So why am I not writing about the five best reasons to visit a state that has so much to offer? Sadly, I’ve come up instead with five reasons why NOT to spend a vacation in Idaho, or for that matter, Florida, Arizona, or Texas. All share efforts by state legislators to push for new laws criminalizing what many of us consider our rights as American citizens and measures to protect our health and the health of others.
Not all Idaho residents or business owners support a recent string of extreme actions by Republican lawmakers, but enough voters do to get these legislators reelected. Consider too the lack of response when Idaho’s Lieut. Gov. Janice McGeachin spoke recently at the white nationalist America First Political Action conference. “Unfortunately, Idaho’s business organizations have been largely silent,” wrote Tara Malek, a former Kootenai County prosecutor and the co-owner of Smith + Malek law firm, in the Idaho Capital Sun. Malek sees the rise of extremist ideology turned-into-law as a “threat to business, industry and economic opportunity in our state.”
She’s right. If we believe in voting with our feet, we won’t leave any footprints in Idaho this year. Here are five reasons why:
No. 1: Idaho Gov. Brad Little this week signed into law legislation that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, and allow potential family members to sue a doctor who performs them after cardiac activity is detected in an embryo. This Texas copy-cat law was passed by both houses.
The law allows the father, grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles of a “preborn child” to each sue an abortion provider for a minimum of $20,000 in damages within four years after the abortion. Rapists can’t file a lawsuit under the law, but a rapist’s relatives could. The law is scheduled to take effect 30 days after the signing although court challenges are expected.
No. 2: A bill passed by the Idaho House would make it a crime for most employers to require a coronavirus vaccine or make an employee disclose their vaccination status. If passed into law, it would become a misdemeanor for employers to refuse to hire or to fire someone for not being vaccinated for a coronavirus or any vaccine made available under an emergency use authorization. It would also become illegal to refuse to hire or to fire an employee for refusing to disclose their vaccination status. Each violation of the bill would be punishable by a fine of up to $1,000.
This comes in a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country and whose hospitals not long ago were so overwhelmed with Covid cases that they had to offload patients to health care facilities in Utah, Washington, and other states.
No. 3: In killing a bill that would have made gender-affirming care a felony, Senate Republicans said they “strongly” oppose “any and all gender reassignment and surgical manipulation of the natural sex” on minors. They pulled the plug because they agreed that the legislation “undermines” a parent’s right to make medical decisions for their children,” but it passed the House by a nearly party-line vote that would have made it a felony — punishable by up to life in prison — to provide minors with hormones, puberty blockers, or gender-affirming surgery.
No. 4: Idaho librarians would face jail time for lending “harmful” books if some house lawmakers got their way. The proposed bill appears dead in the Senate, but passed 51-14 in the House. Its Republican sponsor claimed it was a necessary way to protect children from what she claims are obscene and pornographic books in libraries across the state.
No. 5: Idaho has some of the nation’s most liberal gun laws. Residents do not need a permit to open-carry. That goes for state parks, restaurants, bars, and other places tourists might go. Tell me how hiking near or being seated in a restaurant next to a stranger packing a gun is supposed to make me feel safe.
Could things change? I think so. I’d like to make that trip to Boise and beyond. Just not right now."
Re: TrumpReich in action
Ginni Thomas Is No Outlier
March 29, 2022
By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist
At this point, there’s very little distance between the fringes of the modern Republican Party and the elites who lead it. Superficial differences of affect and emphasis mask shared views and ways of seeing. In fact, members of the Republican elite are very often the fringe figures in question.
Take Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. She is an influential and well-connected conservative political activist who has been a fixture of Washington since the late 1980s. A fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump, she reportedly urged his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to do everything in his power to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election and keep Trump in power. And judging from her text messages to Meadows — which include the hope that the “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators” are awaiting trial before military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay — she is also something of a “Q” believer, one of millions of Americans who embrace the conspiracy theory that Trump is fighting a messianic war against the “deep state.”
Ginni Thomas is also, notably, the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And while Justice Thomas is in no way responsible for the actions of his spouse, it does beggar belief to think he is unaware of her views and actions, including her work to keep Trump in office against the will of the electorate.
But that’s something of a separate issue. What matters here is that we have, in Ginni Thomas, a very high-profile Republican activist who holds, and acts on, fringe, conspiratorial beliefs. And she is not alone.
Like Thomas, Attorney General William P. Barr is a mainstay of the Republican establishment in Washington, a consummate insider with decades of political and legal experience. His service under President Ronald Reagan in the White House led to his appointment as head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President George H.W. Bush. From there, he was appointed deputy attorney general and then, in 1991, attorney general. He returned to public life in 2019 to serve a second stint as attorney general, this time under Trump.
But there’s no reason to think that Barr’s traditional credentials somehow preclude fringe beliefs. As it turns out, they don’t.
In a November 2019 speech sponsored by the Federalist Society, Barr spoke at length on his vision of executive power under the Constitution. In his view, the framers “well understood that their prime antagonist was an overweening Parliament,” and that their aim at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to create a powerful, “unitary” executive with the singular authority of a monarch. “To my mind,” he said, “the real ‘miracle’ in Philadelphia that summer was the creation of a strong Executive, independent of, and coequal with, the other two branches of government.”
Barr concedes the fact of “checks and balances” but insists that, properly understood, the executive branch has nearly limitless authority across multiple arenas. In his view, Congress has no right to challenge claims of executive privilege and the courts have no right to limit the president’s power to make war. “The Constitution is designed to maximize the government’s efficiency to achieve victory — even at the cost of ‘collateral damage’ that would be unacceptable in the domestic realm,” Barr said. “The idea that the judiciary acts as a neutral check on the political branches to protect foreign enemies from our government is insane.”
These are extreme views. What Barr describes isn’t a president, but a king. It is a gussied-up version of Trump’s belief that, under Article II of the Constitution, he had “the right to do whatever I want as president.” It may not be QAnon, but it still belongs to the fringe.
With that said, and despite his later rejection of Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, Barr does appear to hold somewhat conspiratorial views not unlike those of Ginni Thomas. In an interview he gave to The Chicago Tribune just before the 2020 election, Barr insisted that mail-in voting would lead to “selling and buying votes” and implied that Democrats would manufacture votes to win elections.
“Someone will say the president just won Nevada. ‘Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!’ Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from,” Barr said.
You can play this game with any number of prominent Republicans. Leading figures like Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia regularly give voice to conspiracy theories and other wild accusations. Last month, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, released an 11-point agenda that, among other things, denies the existence of transgender people and calls on the government to treat socialism as a “foreign combatant.”
And those Republicans who don’t openly hold fringe views are more than willing to pander to them, from Senator Ted Cruz’s enthusiastic embrace of “stop the steal” to Senator Josh Hawley’s QAnon dogwhistle that Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is soft on (and sympathetic to) child predators.
For Democrats, and especially for Democratic leadership, the upshot of all of this is that they should give up whatever hope they had that the Republican Party will somehow return to normal, that the fever will break and American politics will snap back to reality. From its base to its leaders, the modern Republican Party is fully in the grip of an authoritarian movement animated by extreme beliefs and fringe conspiracy theories.
Democrats can’t force Republicans onto a different path. But they also can’t act as if they’re above the fray. That appears to have been the plan so far, and if the current political state of the Democratic Party is any indication, it’s not working. The only alternative is to confront the Republican Party as forcefully as possible and show the extent to which that party has descended into conspiracies and corruption.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opin ... -barr.html
March 29, 2022
By Jamelle Bouie
Opinion Columnist
At this point, there’s very little distance between the fringes of the modern Republican Party and the elites who lead it. Superficial differences of affect and emphasis mask shared views and ways of seeing. In fact, members of the Republican elite are very often the fringe figures in question.
Take Virginia “Ginni” Thomas. She is an influential and well-connected conservative political activist who has been a fixture of Washington since the late 1980s. A fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump, she reportedly urged his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to do everything in his power to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election and keep Trump in power. And judging from her text messages to Meadows — which include the hope that the “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators” are awaiting trial before military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay — she is also something of a “Q” believer, one of millions of Americans who embrace the conspiracy theory that Trump is fighting a messianic war against the “deep state.”
Ginni Thomas is also, notably, the wife of the Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And while Justice Thomas is in no way responsible for the actions of his spouse, it does beggar belief to think he is unaware of her views and actions, including her work to keep Trump in office against the will of the electorate.
But that’s something of a separate issue. What matters here is that we have, in Ginni Thomas, a very high-profile Republican activist who holds, and acts on, fringe, conspiratorial beliefs. And she is not alone.
Like Thomas, Attorney General William P. Barr is a mainstay of the Republican establishment in Washington, a consummate insider with decades of political and legal experience. His service under President Ronald Reagan in the White House led to his appointment as head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President George H.W. Bush. From there, he was appointed deputy attorney general and then, in 1991, attorney general. He returned to public life in 2019 to serve a second stint as attorney general, this time under Trump.
But there’s no reason to think that Barr’s traditional credentials somehow preclude fringe beliefs. As it turns out, they don’t.
In a November 2019 speech sponsored by the Federalist Society, Barr spoke at length on his vision of executive power under the Constitution. In his view, the framers “well understood that their prime antagonist was an overweening Parliament,” and that their aim at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to create a powerful, “unitary” executive with the singular authority of a monarch. “To my mind,” he said, “the real ‘miracle’ in Philadelphia that summer was the creation of a strong Executive, independent of, and coequal with, the other two branches of government.”
Barr concedes the fact of “checks and balances” but insists that, properly understood, the executive branch has nearly limitless authority across multiple arenas. In his view, Congress has no right to challenge claims of executive privilege and the courts have no right to limit the president’s power to make war. “The Constitution is designed to maximize the government’s efficiency to achieve victory — even at the cost of ‘collateral damage’ that would be unacceptable in the domestic realm,” Barr said. “The idea that the judiciary acts as a neutral check on the political branches to protect foreign enemies from our government is insane.”
These are extreme views. What Barr describes isn’t a president, but a king. It is a gussied-up version of Trump’s belief that, under Article II of the Constitution, he had “the right to do whatever I want as president.” It may not be QAnon, but it still belongs to the fringe.
With that said, and despite his later rejection of Trump’s claims of electoral fraud, Barr does appear to hold somewhat conspiratorial views not unlike those of Ginni Thomas. In an interview he gave to The Chicago Tribune just before the 2020 election, Barr insisted that mail-in voting would lead to “selling and buying votes” and implied that Democrats would manufacture votes to win elections.
“Someone will say the president just won Nevada. ‘Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!’ Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from,” Barr said.
You can play this game with any number of prominent Republicans. Leading figures like Representatives Jim Jordan of Ohio and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia regularly give voice to conspiracy theories and other wild accusations. Last month, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, released an 11-point agenda that, among other things, denies the existence of transgender people and calls on the government to treat socialism as a “foreign combatant.”
And those Republicans who don’t openly hold fringe views are more than willing to pander to them, from Senator Ted Cruz’s enthusiastic embrace of “stop the steal” to Senator Josh Hawley’s QAnon dogwhistle that Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is soft on (and sympathetic to) child predators.
For Democrats, and especially for Democratic leadership, the upshot of all of this is that they should give up whatever hope they had that the Republican Party will somehow return to normal, that the fever will break and American politics will snap back to reality. From its base to its leaders, the modern Republican Party is fully in the grip of an authoritarian movement animated by extreme beliefs and fringe conspiracy theories.
Democrats can’t force Republicans onto a different path. But they also can’t act as if they’re above the fray. That appears to have been the plan so far, and if the current political state of the Democratic Party is any indication, it’s not working. The only alternative is to confront the Republican Party as forcefully as possible and show the extent to which that party has descended into conspiracies and corruption.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opin ... -barr.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
A chip off the old blockhead.Rach3 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 31, 2022 9:22 amAnother Giuliani sleeze-ball:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/andrew-giuli ... 32670.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
My Washington Post subscription allows me to share : GOP jack-boots : https://wapo.st/3NX1JTN
Re: TrumpReich in action
Right as rain.Rach3 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 08, 2022 7:09 pmMy Washington Post subscription allows me to share : GOP jack-boots : https://wapo.st/3NX1JTN
Never forget!
Re: TrumpReich in action
From Kansas City Star today:
Missouri bill allows school district elections to ban transgender kids from sports.
The sponsor of the amendment argued that ‘males are biologically superior to females’.
(Rach 3: By his utterance, proving just the opposite .)
Missouri bill allows school district elections to ban transgender kids from sports.
The sponsor of the amendment argued that ‘males are biologically superior to females’.
(Rach 3: By his utterance, proving just the opposite .)
Re: TrumpReich in action
What, really?
So the fact that women live longer than men somehow never penetrated this guy's massive ego!!
Re: TrumpReich in action
From WAPO today.Surprise, surprise, McConnell's and Paul's Confederate goober Kentucky:
A restaurant manager flew a Ukrainian flag. Hateful messages followed.
By Jonathan Edwards
Today at 7:40 a.m. EDT
Ukrainian and American flags fly atop a Colton's Steak House & Grill in Bardstown, Ky. (Courtesy of Ben Ashlock)
Ben Ashlock thought he had settled things with a customer complaining about the Ukrainian flag atop the Kentucky steakhouse he manages.
Ashlock had opened up to the man about his personal connection to the war-torn country: He and his wife had adopted a teenage son from Ukraine three years earlier and forged friendships in the process. When Russia invaded, he wanted to show his support.
The 41-year-old general manager of a Colton’s Steak House & Grill franchise figured that was it.
It wasn’t. About a half-hour later, hate started coming from all fronts — the restaurant’s phone, Facebook page and reviews on Google. Over the past week, the firestorm has kept raging in Bardstown, a city of about 13,500 in central Kentucky. Ashlock, describing himself as an uncontroversial person, said he had planned to keep the flag up until Russia left Ukraine.
“I would love to take the flag down … because that would mean that they’re not at war anymore,” he said.
Ashlock and his wife of 19 years, Darrci, forged lifelong friendships in Ukraine while there to adopt their son. The 16-year-old is one of the couple’s 13 children — eight biological and five adopted or in the process of being adopted.
When the Russian military attacked on Feb. 24, Ashlock felt helpless. The owner of the steakhouse, who had helped Ashlock raise money for the adoption and paid for all three of the trips he took to Ukraine, sent the country’s blue-and-yellow flag days later. Ashlock decided to fly it outside the restaurant. Once it was up, he took photos and sent them to his friends in Ukraine.
“You just let them know, even in little old Kentucky, we see you, and we’re supporting you,” he said, adding that he didn’t think it would be a problem.
And for more than a month, it wasn’t.
Until April 9 — what Ashlock called “that fateful Saturday.”
That afternoon, Ashlock was working when someone sent the Colton’s Facebook page a direct message: “My family eats at Colton’s steakhouse, but will not eat there again until the Ukrainian flag is replaced with our national Flag.”
Ashlock replied about 30 minutes later, explaining that Ukraine’s flag had not replaced an American one but one of two Texas state flags the steakhouse uses to cultivate the chain’s Wild West, old saloon theme. Ashlock also told the man about adopting his son “whose hometown is now in ruins and under occupation.”
“I am sorry you feel this way, though,” Ashlock wrote. “And I hope you’ll reconsider.”
He thought that, at worst, they ended in an agree-to-disagree stalemate.
His employees soon started noticing Facebook users swarming the restaurant’s page to tar workers as disrespectful and unpatriotic. Some vowed never to eat there again.
Then the phone started ringing. Ashlock took the first call, a man asking why he “took the flag down.” Again, Ashlock explained what had happened before food orders pulled him into the kitchen. He passed off the phone.
But it kept ringing. At one point, one of the restaurant’s hosts came to him crying. “I felt horrible,” he said.
Meanwhile, the negative comments kept coming. Many were removed, but before they disappeared, Ashlock took screenshots, some of which he shared with The Post.
One said: “Take that trash flag down! May Ukraine be leveled to the ground!”
Another read: “It seems the only thing you accomplished flying this foreign flag is to further divide your fellow americans. One can’t even [sit] down to a meal these days without having politics flown in ones face.”
“I hope that Ukrainian flag is gone,” one user said, adding a face-with-monocle emoji. “I prefer my steak without a side of Nazi.”
Over on Google, someone left a one-star review of Colton’s: “food tasted woke, management is a war monger.”
“I hate to say it, because I try to be thick-skinned,” Ashlock told The Post, “but it was hurtful.”
Ashlock said he tried a compromise. After the blowback and misunderstanding that they had replaced an American flag, Ashlock swapped out the other Texas state flag for the Stars and Stripes. He consulted with military friends to make sure he was practicing proper flag etiquette by flying it higher than the Ukrainian one.
Doing that wasn’t a “crisis of conscience” — Ashlock said that’s who he is. Twenty-five years working in the service industry have trained him to be the first to apologize, to defer to customers, and to admit when he or the restaurant has made a mistake.
“I’ve never been in a predicament before where I couldn’t make someone happy and not, like, violate my conscience.”
Until now. While Ashlock said he was happy to fly the American flag, he didn’t think it would be right to cave in to demands to take down Ukraine’s as people there — including his friends — fight for their freedom.
So he hasn’t.
At a steakhouse chain in the middle of Kentucky — more than 5,000 miles away from its mother country — the Ukrainian flag still flies.
A restaurant manager flew a Ukrainian flag. Hateful messages followed.
By Jonathan Edwards
Today at 7:40 a.m. EDT
Ukrainian and American flags fly atop a Colton's Steak House & Grill in Bardstown, Ky. (Courtesy of Ben Ashlock)
Ben Ashlock thought he had settled things with a customer complaining about the Ukrainian flag atop the Kentucky steakhouse he manages.
Ashlock had opened up to the man about his personal connection to the war-torn country: He and his wife had adopted a teenage son from Ukraine three years earlier and forged friendships in the process. When Russia invaded, he wanted to show his support.
The 41-year-old general manager of a Colton’s Steak House & Grill franchise figured that was it.
It wasn’t. About a half-hour later, hate started coming from all fronts — the restaurant’s phone, Facebook page and reviews on Google. Over the past week, the firestorm has kept raging in Bardstown, a city of about 13,500 in central Kentucky. Ashlock, describing himself as an uncontroversial person, said he had planned to keep the flag up until Russia left Ukraine.
“I would love to take the flag down … because that would mean that they’re not at war anymore,” he said.
Ashlock and his wife of 19 years, Darrci, forged lifelong friendships in Ukraine while there to adopt their son. The 16-year-old is one of the couple’s 13 children — eight biological and five adopted or in the process of being adopted.
When the Russian military attacked on Feb. 24, Ashlock felt helpless. The owner of the steakhouse, who had helped Ashlock raise money for the adoption and paid for all three of the trips he took to Ukraine, sent the country’s blue-and-yellow flag days later. Ashlock decided to fly it outside the restaurant. Once it was up, he took photos and sent them to his friends in Ukraine.
“You just let them know, even in little old Kentucky, we see you, and we’re supporting you,” he said, adding that he didn’t think it would be a problem.
And for more than a month, it wasn’t.
Until April 9 — what Ashlock called “that fateful Saturday.”
That afternoon, Ashlock was working when someone sent the Colton’s Facebook page a direct message: “My family eats at Colton’s steakhouse, but will not eat there again until the Ukrainian flag is replaced with our national Flag.”
Ashlock replied about 30 minutes later, explaining that Ukraine’s flag had not replaced an American one but one of two Texas state flags the steakhouse uses to cultivate the chain’s Wild West, old saloon theme. Ashlock also told the man about adopting his son “whose hometown is now in ruins and under occupation.”
“I am sorry you feel this way, though,” Ashlock wrote. “And I hope you’ll reconsider.”
He thought that, at worst, they ended in an agree-to-disagree stalemate.
His employees soon started noticing Facebook users swarming the restaurant’s page to tar workers as disrespectful and unpatriotic. Some vowed never to eat there again.
Then the phone started ringing. Ashlock took the first call, a man asking why he “took the flag down.” Again, Ashlock explained what had happened before food orders pulled him into the kitchen. He passed off the phone.
But it kept ringing. At one point, one of the restaurant’s hosts came to him crying. “I felt horrible,” he said.
Meanwhile, the negative comments kept coming. Many were removed, but before they disappeared, Ashlock took screenshots, some of which he shared with The Post.
One said: “Take that trash flag down! May Ukraine be leveled to the ground!”
Another read: “It seems the only thing you accomplished flying this foreign flag is to further divide your fellow americans. One can’t even [sit] down to a meal these days without having politics flown in ones face.”
“I hope that Ukrainian flag is gone,” one user said, adding a face-with-monocle emoji. “I prefer my steak without a side of Nazi.”
Over on Google, someone left a one-star review of Colton’s: “food tasted woke, management is a war monger.”
“I hate to say it, because I try to be thick-skinned,” Ashlock told The Post, “but it was hurtful.”
Ashlock said he tried a compromise. After the blowback and misunderstanding that they had replaced an American flag, Ashlock swapped out the other Texas state flag for the Stars and Stripes. He consulted with military friends to make sure he was practicing proper flag etiquette by flying it higher than the Ukrainian one.
Doing that wasn’t a “crisis of conscience” — Ashlock said that’s who he is. Twenty-five years working in the service industry have trained him to be the first to apologize, to defer to customers, and to admit when he or the restaurant has made a mistake.
“I’ve never been in a predicament before where I couldn’t make someone happy and not, like, violate my conscience.”
Until now. While Ashlock said he was happy to fly the American flag, he didn’t think it would be right to cave in to demands to take down Ukraine’s as people there — including his friends — fight for their freedom.
So he hasn’t.
At a steakhouse chain in the middle of Kentucky — more than 5,000 miles away from its mother country — the Ukrainian flag still flies.
Re: TrumpReich in action
The fascist GOP attack on ALL Biden's nominees:
https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-report ... new-yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-report ... new-yorker
Re: TrumpReich in action
As G.O.P. Candidates Face Accusations, Rivals Tread Carefully
In several states, Republican candidates are contending with allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. Few of their primary rivals want to talk about it.
By Jonathan Weisman
April 15, 2022
WASHINGTON — When fresh allegations of domestic violence were lodged against former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month, one of his Republican rivals for the state’s open Senate seat, Representative Vicky Hartzler, stepped up and called for him to end his campaign.
Then she moved on to an issue perhaps more resonant with Republican primary voters: transgender women in sports.
“Eric Greitens is a toxic candidate unfit to hold office,” Michael Hafner, a spokesman for Ms. Hartzler’s Senate campaign, said, before declaring the central message of her campaign: “Missouri family values, freedom, and taking back our country.”
In Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and now Nebraska, Republican men running for high office face significant allegations of domestic violence, stalking, even sexual assault — accusations that once would have derailed any run for office. But in an era of Republican politics when Donald J. Trump could survive and thrive amid accusations of sexual assault, opposing candidates are finding little traction in dwelling on the issues.
Political scientists who have studied Republican voting since the rise of Trumpism are not surprised that accused candidates have soldiered on — and that their primary rivals have approached the accusations tepidly. In this fiercely partisan moment, concerns about personal behavior are dwarfed by the struggle between Republicans and Democrats, which Republican men and women see as life-or-death. Increasingly, Republicans cast accusations of sexual misconduct as an attempt by liberals to silence conservatives.
The candidates who do speak of their opponents’ domestic violence and assault allegations often raise them not as disqualifications in looming Republican primaries, but as matters ripe for exploitation by Democrats in the fall.
“It’s a horrible problem; he’ll never be elected, and that’s the educational process we’re going through right now,” Gary Black, Georgia’s agriculture commissioner, said of domestic violence and assault allegations leveled at Herschel Walker, his Trump-backed Republican rival to take on Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in November. “There’s a great desire for Republicans to get their seat back. Electability is going to be the issue over the next six weeks.”
Democrats, including President Biden and Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, have weathered their own accusations of misconduct in the past — and where such charges have proven difficult to discount, the party has shown itself more willing to jettison its candidates.
The accusations facing some Republican men are so stark that they raise the question: What would disqualify a candidate in a Republican primary? Mr. Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor after a hairdresser testified under oath in 2018 that he had taped her hands to pull-up rings in his basement, blindfolded her, stripped her clothes off and taken a photo of her, which he threatened to release if she revealed their affair.
Amid his current Senate campaign, Mr. Greitens was accused last month in a sworn affidavit from his former wife that he had violently abused her and had hit one of their sons as his governorship unraveled. Still, a poll taken after the accusations came to light showed Mr. Greitens neck and neck with Ms. Hartzler and Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s attorney general.
Mr. Walker, a former college and pro football star who has the backing not only of Mr. Trump but also much of the Republican establishment, has been accused by his ex-wife of attacking her in bed, choking her and threatening to kill her. Mr. Walker doesn’t deny the assault and has said he was suffering from mental illness.
Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker’s campaign, said he “emphatically denies” the “false claims” from another woman who said he had been her longtime boyfriend and that when she broke up with him, he had threatened to kill her and himself. Ms. Blount also said he has denied a violent stalking charge by a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Mr. Walker “has owned up to his mistakes, sought forgiveness, gotten treatment, and dedicated his life to helping others who are struggling,” Ms. Blount said, condemning the media for surfacing past allegations.
Max Miller, another Trump-backed candidate and a former White House aide running for an Ohio House seat, was accused by one of Mr. Trump’s press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, of hitting her the day they broke up. Mr. Miller denied the allegation, then sued Ms. Grisham for defamation, accusing her of making “libelous and defamatory false statements.” His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
“It used to be that being accused of domestic violence was an automatic disqualifier, regardless of party,” Ms. Grisham’s lawyer, Adam VanHo, said. “And to turn around and sue to silence your accuser was even more abhorrent.”
On Thursday, a Republican state senator in Nebraska, Julie Slama, accused a leading Republican candidate for governor in that state, Charles Herbster, of sexually assaulting her three years ago when she was 22, saying in a statement that she had “prayed I would never have to relive this trauma.” Mr. Herbster denied the charges, claiming he was being targeted by political rivals. He linked himself to others who have beaten back similar accusations.
“They did it with Brett Kavanaugh. They certainly did it with Donald J. Trump and now they’re trying to do it with Charles W. Herbster,” he told a local radio station.
In Missouri, Mr. Greitens’s defiance spurred Rene Artman, who chairs the Republican central committee of St. Louis County, to organize other Republican women to pressure the party chairman, Nick Myers, to demand Mr. Greitens withdraw.
“We’ve heard not a thing, not a thing,” she said on Friday. “This is the breakdown of society. When you take morals and God out of country, this is what happens. I don’t think you can blame this on Trump whatsoever.”
Republican candidates, by and large, have remained defiant. One exception is Sean Parnell, Mr. Trump’s pick for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, who suspended his campaign after his estranged wife testified that he had repeatedly abused her and their children.
Political scientists are not surprised by Republicans’ tolerance for accusations. Charges of misogyny, sexual harassment and even domestic abuse have “become deeply partisan in terms of beliefs about what is acceptable and what is appropriate,” said Kelly Dittmar, a professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “And now it’s fallen into the talk of ‘cancel culture’ in the broader society.”
It was widely believed that Mr. Trump’s own confession, caught on an infamous video recorded for “Access Hollywood,” that he routinely grabbed women by the genitals — and the plethora of accusations that followed — would drive away women voters.
But in 2016, 88 percent of Republican women voted for Mr. Trump, just a percentage point below the share of Republican men who did. Even in 2018, when women were widely seen as having delivered the House to Democrats in response to the Trump presidency, Republican women were no more likely to vote for Democrats than they had been two years before, said Erin C. Cassese, a professor of political science at the University of Delaware who studies women’s voting patterns.
The #MeToo movement and the current debate over transgender rights and education are only widening the gap between Republican women and women who identify as Democrats and independents, Prof. Cassese said. For female candidates, appeals to gender solidarity or attacks on misogyny do not seem to work in Republican primaries.
“It’s very hard to make those appeals, even for women candidates appealing to women,” she said. “We don’t have any sense of what messages might work.”
Jane Timken, the only woman in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, has injected gender into the race — though delicately. In February, she released an advertisement chiding her male rivals: “We all know guys who overcompensate for their inadequacies, and that description fits the guys in the Senate race to a T.”
But in an interview on Friday, she explicitly dismissed the issue of gender. “They’re not bad male candidates. They’re just bad candidates,” she said of her opponents, adding that the mistreatment of women is “not an issue that I’m campaigning on. I’m campaigning on the Biden failed policies of border security, inflation and jobs.”
In the Trump era, the men who are accused of wrongdoing have become adept at framing themselves as the victims of a broader conspiracy or an intolerant society. Mr. Greitens has blamed George W. Bush’s former political aide, Karl Rove; the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell; even the liberal philanthropist George Soros for the release of his ex-wife’s abuse allegations. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Republicans running against those accused say they do see an opening, as long as it’s navigated carefully. Representative Billy Long, who is running in the Missouri Republican Senate primary, emphasized the “$400,000 or so in costs, fines and penalties” that state taxpayers have already shouldered for investigations into Mr. Greitens’s activities. Then there’s the ongoing child custody fight between Mr. Greitens and his ex-wife.
“If domestic violence is proven true, he’s toast,” Mr. Long said.
Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Athens, Ohio.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/p ... women.html
In several states, Republican candidates are contending with allegations of domestic violence and sexual assault. Few of their primary rivals want to talk about it.
By Jonathan Weisman
April 15, 2022
WASHINGTON — When fresh allegations of domestic violence were lodged against former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens last month, one of his Republican rivals for the state’s open Senate seat, Representative Vicky Hartzler, stepped up and called for him to end his campaign.
Then she moved on to an issue perhaps more resonant with Republican primary voters: transgender women in sports.
“Eric Greitens is a toxic candidate unfit to hold office,” Michael Hafner, a spokesman for Ms. Hartzler’s Senate campaign, said, before declaring the central message of her campaign: “Missouri family values, freedom, and taking back our country.”
In Missouri, Georgia, Ohio and now Nebraska, Republican men running for high office face significant allegations of domestic violence, stalking, even sexual assault — accusations that once would have derailed any run for office. But in an era of Republican politics when Donald J. Trump could survive and thrive amid accusations of sexual assault, opposing candidates are finding little traction in dwelling on the issues.
Political scientists who have studied Republican voting since the rise of Trumpism are not surprised that accused candidates have soldiered on — and that their primary rivals have approached the accusations tepidly. In this fiercely partisan moment, concerns about personal behavior are dwarfed by the struggle between Republicans and Democrats, which Republican men and women see as life-or-death. Increasingly, Republicans cast accusations of sexual misconduct as an attempt by liberals to silence conservatives.
The candidates who do speak of their opponents’ domestic violence and assault allegations often raise them not as disqualifications in looming Republican primaries, but as matters ripe for exploitation by Democrats in the fall.
“It’s a horrible problem; he’ll never be elected, and that’s the educational process we’re going through right now,” Gary Black, Georgia’s agriculture commissioner, said of domestic violence and assault allegations leveled at Herschel Walker, his Trump-backed Republican rival to take on Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in November. “There’s a great desire for Republicans to get their seat back. Electability is going to be the issue over the next six weeks.”
Democrats, including President Biden and Keith Ellison, the attorney general of Minnesota, have weathered their own accusations of misconduct in the past — and where such charges have proven difficult to discount, the party has shown itself more willing to jettison its candidates.
The accusations facing some Republican men are so stark that they raise the question: What would disqualify a candidate in a Republican primary? Mr. Greitens resigned as Missouri’s governor after a hairdresser testified under oath in 2018 that he had taped her hands to pull-up rings in his basement, blindfolded her, stripped her clothes off and taken a photo of her, which he threatened to release if she revealed their affair.
Amid his current Senate campaign, Mr. Greitens was accused last month in a sworn affidavit from his former wife that he had violently abused her and had hit one of their sons as his governorship unraveled. Still, a poll taken after the accusations came to light showed Mr. Greitens neck and neck with Ms. Hartzler and Eric Schmitt, Missouri’s attorney general.
Mr. Walker, a former college and pro football star who has the backing not only of Mr. Trump but also much of the Republican establishment, has been accused by his ex-wife of attacking her in bed, choking her and threatening to kill her. Mr. Walker doesn’t deny the assault and has said he was suffering from mental illness.
Mallory Blount, a spokeswoman for Mr. Walker’s campaign, said he “emphatically denies” the “false claims” from another woman who said he had been her longtime boyfriend and that when she broke up with him, he had threatened to kill her and himself. Ms. Blount also said he has denied a violent stalking charge by a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
Mr. Walker “has owned up to his mistakes, sought forgiveness, gotten treatment, and dedicated his life to helping others who are struggling,” Ms. Blount said, condemning the media for surfacing past allegations.
Max Miller, another Trump-backed candidate and a former White House aide running for an Ohio House seat, was accused by one of Mr. Trump’s press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, of hitting her the day they broke up. Mr. Miller denied the allegation, then sued Ms. Grisham for defamation, accusing her of making “libelous and defamatory false statements.” His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
“It used to be that being accused of domestic violence was an automatic disqualifier, regardless of party,” Ms. Grisham’s lawyer, Adam VanHo, said. “And to turn around and sue to silence your accuser was even more abhorrent.”
On Thursday, a Republican state senator in Nebraska, Julie Slama, accused a leading Republican candidate for governor in that state, Charles Herbster, of sexually assaulting her three years ago when she was 22, saying in a statement that she had “prayed I would never have to relive this trauma.” Mr. Herbster denied the charges, claiming he was being targeted by political rivals. He linked himself to others who have beaten back similar accusations.
“They did it with Brett Kavanaugh. They certainly did it with Donald J. Trump and now they’re trying to do it with Charles W. Herbster,” he told a local radio station.
In Missouri, Mr. Greitens’s defiance spurred Rene Artman, who chairs the Republican central committee of St. Louis County, to organize other Republican women to pressure the party chairman, Nick Myers, to demand Mr. Greitens withdraw.
“We’ve heard not a thing, not a thing,” she said on Friday. “This is the breakdown of society. When you take morals and God out of country, this is what happens. I don’t think you can blame this on Trump whatsoever.”
Republican candidates, by and large, have remained defiant. One exception is Sean Parnell, Mr. Trump’s pick for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, who suspended his campaign after his estranged wife testified that he had repeatedly abused her and their children.
Political scientists are not surprised by Republicans’ tolerance for accusations. Charges of misogyny, sexual harassment and even domestic abuse have “become deeply partisan in terms of beliefs about what is acceptable and what is appropriate,” said Kelly Dittmar, a professor at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “And now it’s fallen into the talk of ‘cancel culture’ in the broader society.”
It was widely believed that Mr. Trump’s own confession, caught on an infamous video recorded for “Access Hollywood,” that he routinely grabbed women by the genitals — and the plethora of accusations that followed — would drive away women voters.
But in 2016, 88 percent of Republican women voted for Mr. Trump, just a percentage point below the share of Republican men who did. Even in 2018, when women were widely seen as having delivered the House to Democrats in response to the Trump presidency, Republican women were no more likely to vote for Democrats than they had been two years before, said Erin C. Cassese, a professor of political science at the University of Delaware who studies women’s voting patterns.
The #MeToo movement and the current debate over transgender rights and education are only widening the gap between Republican women and women who identify as Democrats and independents, Prof. Cassese said. For female candidates, appeals to gender solidarity or attacks on misogyny do not seem to work in Republican primaries.
“It’s very hard to make those appeals, even for women candidates appealing to women,” she said. “We don’t have any sense of what messages might work.”
Jane Timken, the only woman in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, has injected gender into the race — though delicately. In February, she released an advertisement chiding her male rivals: “We all know guys who overcompensate for their inadequacies, and that description fits the guys in the Senate race to a T.”
But in an interview on Friday, she explicitly dismissed the issue of gender. “They’re not bad male candidates. They’re just bad candidates,” she said of her opponents, adding that the mistreatment of women is “not an issue that I’m campaigning on. I’m campaigning on the Biden failed policies of border security, inflation and jobs.”
In the Trump era, the men who are accused of wrongdoing have become adept at framing themselves as the victims of a broader conspiracy or an intolerant society. Mr. Greitens has blamed George W. Bush’s former political aide, Karl Rove; the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell; even the liberal philanthropist George Soros for the release of his ex-wife’s abuse allegations. His campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Republicans running against those accused say they do see an opening, as long as it’s navigated carefully. Representative Billy Long, who is running in the Missouri Republican Senate primary, emphasized the “$400,000 or so in costs, fines and penalties” that state taxpayers have already shouldered for investigations into Mr. Greitens’s activities. Then there’s the ongoing child custody fight between Mr. Greitens and his ex-wife.
“If domestic violence is proven true, he’s toast,” Mr. Long said.
Jazmine Ulloa contributed reporting from Athens, Ohio.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/p ... women.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
What the GOP is thinking:
From New Yorker Magazine today:
In 2003, when the Supreme Court held, in Lawrence v. Texas, that criminalizing gay sex was unconstitutional, it insisted that the decision had nothing to do with marriage equality. In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Do not believe it.” Then, in 2013, when the Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, emphasizing the tradition of letting the states define marriage, Scalia issued another warning, saying that “no one should be fooled” into thinking that the Court would leave states free to exclude gay couples from that definition. He was finally proved right two years later, when the reasoning on dignity and equality developed in those earlier rulings led to the Court’s holding that the Constitution requires all states to recognize same-sex marriage.
Just as rights can unfold and expand, however, they can also retract and constrict in breathtaking ways, pursuing a particular strain of logic one case at a time. In the forthcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court is widely expected to overturn or severely undermine its abortion-rights cases, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In fact, following the comments of the six conservative Justices at the oral arguments in December, the strength of this expectation has spurred state legislative efforts to proceed as if Roe were already gone. A handful of states have passed laws, like the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs, that ban abortion after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, in violation of precedents establishing that abortion cannot be banned before “viability,” at around twenty-four weeks. (On Thursday, Florida became the most recent.) Some of the laws have been blocked by the courts, but, if Mississippi prevails, the states expect to be free to enforce these bans.
Among the more restrictive bills currently under consideration across the country, more than a dozen emulate the Texas “heartbeat” law, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and allows only private citizens, not state officials, to enforce the ban. That provision insulates the law from being challenged as unconstitutional in federal court. The Supreme Court repeatedly declined to block the Texas ban, but did leave open a possible avenue to challenge it. In March, the Texas Supreme Court closed that avenue.
Idaho became the first state to enact a Texas-inspired law. Idaho’s law bans abortion after about six weeks, and allows family members (including a rapist’s relatives) of the “preborn child” to sue a provider who performs an abortion. The law was passed last month, but Idaho’s Supreme Court has temporarily blocked it from taking effect. Missouri has introduced a bill that allows private citizens to sue an out-of-state abortion provider, or even someone who helps transport a person across state lines for an abortion. Wyoming has passed a law that bans most abortions, which will be triggered if the Supreme Court overturns Roe. The boldest effort thus far, though, has been in Oklahoma, a destination for Texans seeking abortions. Two weeks ago, Oklahoma’s legislature made it a felony punishable by ten years in prison to perform an abortion except to save a woman’s life in a medical emergency. The governor signed the bill last Tuesday; the law is set to go into effect in August.
Overturning Roe would be the culmination of a half-century-long legal campaign singularly focussed on that outcome. And there are signs that, far from being an end in itself, it would launch even more ambitious agendas. In the Dobbs litigation, Mississippi denied that doing away with Roe would cast doubt on other precedents, set between 1965 and 2015, on which Roe rested or which relied on Roe. This series of decisions held that states cannot ban contraceptives, criminalize gay sex, or refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. The state told the Court that those cases are not like Dobbs, because “none of them involve the purposeful termination of a human life.” But all of them involve the question of whether states should be able to make laws that affect some of the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. In recent weeks, in anticipation of the Dobbs decision, various Republican senators have questioned Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a state ban on contraceptives; Obergefell v. Hodges, which required states to recognize same-sex marriage; and even Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated a state anti-miscegenation law. Overturning Roe would almost certainly fuel the broader fight to get fundamental moral issues out of the realm of federal constitutional rights and under the control of the states.
A Supreme Court decision overturning Roe would seek to justify itself on the ground that it allows states to resolve the issue of abortion for themselves, through democratic processes, rather than by having a resolution imposed on them. At that point, it will be tempting to echo Justice Scalia’s “Do not believe it” warning. Although the legal arguments against Roe have focussed on returning the issue to the states, for five decades the core moral belief against the ruling has been that abortion is the termination of a human life. Last week, a twenty-six-year-old Texas woman was arrested on murder charges, for “intentionally and knowingly causing the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.” The prosecutor dismissed the case, saying that the Texas law did not apply to it. But the incident suggested a possible post-Dobbs future, in which states pursue criminal charges against people who have abortions as well as against those who provide them.
It may also be only a matter of time, if Mississippi prevails, before pro-life legal efforts turn toward getting the Supreme Court to recognize the constitutional rights of the fetus. These efforts would focus on the same part of the Constitution that was previously held to provide the right to abortion, the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Fetuses are currently not considered to be persons. But Mississippi’s brief repeatedly notes the human attributes of the fetus, in utero, and it may be a precursor to future constitutional arguments to the effect that fetal personhood prohibits abortion.
In the face of such a push, liberals may one day find themselves advocating for leaving the matter to the states, and perhaps even seeking novel methods—like the one Texas concocted—to circumvent federal-court review of state laws protecting abortion access. Whether or not it would take another fifty years or more for a fetal right to unfold, the pro-life legal movement has demonstrated its ability to fight the long fight. ♦
Published in the print edition of the April 25 & May 2, 2022, issue, with the headline “Beyond Roe.”
Jeannie Suk Gersen is a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard Law School.
From New Yorker Magazine today:
In 2003, when the Supreme Court held, in Lawrence v. Texas, that criminalizing gay sex was unconstitutional, it insisted that the decision had nothing to do with marriage equality. In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Do not believe it.” Then, in 2013, when the Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, emphasizing the tradition of letting the states define marriage, Scalia issued another warning, saying that “no one should be fooled” into thinking that the Court would leave states free to exclude gay couples from that definition. He was finally proved right two years later, when the reasoning on dignity and equality developed in those earlier rulings led to the Court’s holding that the Constitution requires all states to recognize same-sex marriage.
Just as rights can unfold and expand, however, they can also retract and constrict in breathtaking ways, pursuing a particular strain of logic one case at a time. In the forthcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court is widely expected to overturn or severely undermine its abortion-rights cases, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In fact, following the comments of the six conservative Justices at the oral arguments in December, the strength of this expectation has spurred state legislative efforts to proceed as if Roe were already gone. A handful of states have passed laws, like the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs, that ban abortion after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, in violation of precedents establishing that abortion cannot be banned before “viability,” at around twenty-four weeks. (On Thursday, Florida became the most recent.) Some of the laws have been blocked by the courts, but, if Mississippi prevails, the states expect to be free to enforce these bans.
Among the more restrictive bills currently under consideration across the country, more than a dozen emulate the Texas “heartbeat” law, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and allows only private citizens, not state officials, to enforce the ban. That provision insulates the law from being challenged as unconstitutional in federal court. The Supreme Court repeatedly declined to block the Texas ban, but did leave open a possible avenue to challenge it. In March, the Texas Supreme Court closed that avenue.
Idaho became the first state to enact a Texas-inspired law. Idaho’s law bans abortion after about six weeks, and allows family members (including a rapist’s relatives) of the “preborn child” to sue a provider who performs an abortion. The law was passed last month, but Idaho’s Supreme Court has temporarily blocked it from taking effect. Missouri has introduced a bill that allows private citizens to sue an out-of-state abortion provider, or even someone who helps transport a person across state lines for an abortion. Wyoming has passed a law that bans most abortions, which will be triggered if the Supreme Court overturns Roe. The boldest effort thus far, though, has been in Oklahoma, a destination for Texans seeking abortions. Two weeks ago, Oklahoma’s legislature made it a felony punishable by ten years in prison to perform an abortion except to save a woman’s life in a medical emergency. The governor signed the bill last Tuesday; the law is set to go into effect in August.
Overturning Roe would be the culmination of a half-century-long legal campaign singularly focussed on that outcome. And there are signs that, far from being an end in itself, it would launch even more ambitious agendas. In the Dobbs litigation, Mississippi denied that doing away with Roe would cast doubt on other precedents, set between 1965 and 2015, on which Roe rested or which relied on Roe. This series of decisions held that states cannot ban contraceptives, criminalize gay sex, or refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. The state told the Court that those cases are not like Dobbs, because “none of them involve the purposeful termination of a human life.” But all of them involve the question of whether states should be able to make laws that affect some of the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. In recent weeks, in anticipation of the Dobbs decision, various Republican senators have questioned Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a state ban on contraceptives; Obergefell v. Hodges, which required states to recognize same-sex marriage; and even Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated a state anti-miscegenation law. Overturning Roe would almost certainly fuel the broader fight to get fundamental moral issues out of the realm of federal constitutional rights and under the control of the states.
A Supreme Court decision overturning Roe would seek to justify itself on the ground that it allows states to resolve the issue of abortion for themselves, through democratic processes, rather than by having a resolution imposed on them. At that point, it will be tempting to echo Justice Scalia’s “Do not believe it” warning. Although the legal arguments against Roe have focussed on returning the issue to the states, for five decades the core moral belief against the ruling has been that abortion is the termination of a human life. Last week, a twenty-six-year-old Texas woman was arrested on murder charges, for “intentionally and knowingly causing the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.” The prosecutor dismissed the case, saying that the Texas law did not apply to it. But the incident suggested a possible post-Dobbs future, in which states pursue criminal charges against people who have abortions as well as against those who provide them.
It may also be only a matter of time, if Mississippi prevails, before pro-life legal efforts turn toward getting the Supreme Court to recognize the constitutional rights of the fetus. These efforts would focus on the same part of the Constitution that was previously held to provide the right to abortion, the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Fetuses are currently not considered to be persons. But Mississippi’s brief repeatedly notes the human attributes of the fetus, in utero, and it may be a precursor to future constitutional arguments to the effect that fetal personhood prohibits abortion.
In the face of such a push, liberals may one day find themselves advocating for leaving the matter to the states, and perhaps even seeking novel methods—like the one Texas concocted—to circumvent federal-court review of state laws protecting abortion access. Whether or not it would take another fifty years or more for a fetal right to unfold, the pro-life legal movement has demonstrated its ability to fight the long fight. ♦
Published in the print edition of the April 25 & May 2, 2022, issue, with the headline “Beyond Roe.”
Jeannie Suk Gersen is a contributing writer to The New Yorker and a professor at Harvard Law School.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Excellent insights, Steve. I hadn't been thinking that far ahead yet, but this makes perfect sense. The New Deal philosophy endured for 50-60 years, so we may be in for a 50 year duration of the madness of radical conservatives.
Never forget.
Never forget.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Surprise,Surprise, the 3 SCOTUS Trump stooges again:
NYT
Adam Liptak
April 25, 2022, 5:23 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily approved new admissions criteria at an elite public high school in Virginia that eliminated standardized tests, clearing the way for the use of a policy intended to diversify the student body in choosing the class that will enter in the fall.
The court’s ruling rejected a request for emergency relief from a group that objected to the new rules, saying they harmed Asian American students.
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the court acts on emergency applications asking the justices to intervene while appeals are moving forward. The court’s three most conservative members — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have reinstated a trial judge’s ruling blocking the new criteria. They, too, did not explain their thinking.
The school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., known as T.J., changed its admissions requirements in 2020 in the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd.
The school, among the best in the nation, is in Fairfax County, outside Washington, and accepts students from the county and from several surrounding counties and cities. Like admissions criteria at other elite public high schools across the country, the school’s policies have been at the center of fierce debates among politicians and parents about whether and how to diversify enrollment.
A related issue is already before the Supreme Court, which will hear challenges to admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina in the fall. Those programs explicitly take account of race as one factor among many.
The high school’s new program, by contrast, uses race-neutral criteria. In addition to doing away with standardized tests, the program sets aside spots for the top 1.5 percent of students from each public middle school in the area, leaving about 100 openings for everyone else, including applicants from private schools and students who have been home-schooled.
NYT
Adam Liptak
April 25, 2022, 5:23 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily approved new admissions criteria at an elite public high school in Virginia that eliminated standardized tests, clearing the way for the use of a policy intended to diversify the student body in choosing the class that will enter in the fall.
The court’s ruling rejected a request for emergency relief from a group that objected to the new rules, saying they harmed Asian American students.
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the court acts on emergency applications asking the justices to intervene while appeals are moving forward. The court’s three most conservative members — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have reinstated a trial judge’s ruling blocking the new criteria. They, too, did not explain their thinking.
The school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., known as T.J., changed its admissions requirements in 2020 in the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd.
The school, among the best in the nation, is in Fairfax County, outside Washington, and accepts students from the county and from several surrounding counties and cities. Like admissions criteria at other elite public high schools across the country, the school’s policies have been at the center of fierce debates among politicians and parents about whether and how to diversify enrollment.
A related issue is already before the Supreme Court, which will hear challenges to admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina in the fall. Those programs explicitly take account of race as one factor among many.
The high school’s new program, by contrast, uses race-neutral criteria. In addition to doing away with standardized tests, the program sets aside spots for the top 1.5 percent of students from each public middle school in the area, leaving about 100 openings for everyone else, including applicants from private schools and students who have been home-schooled.
Re: TrumpReich in action
The Republican Plot to Lose Wisconsin in 2022
The midterm election is approaching, but the GOP won’t give up 2020.
Michael Gableman isn’t a secret Democratic double agent, but he’s sure acting like one. Mr. Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, was hired by the GOP Assembly to investigate the 2020 election. Last week he wrangled an extension. At this rate, Wisconsin Republicans might keep trying to undo the 2020 presidential result all the way to Election Day 2022, or 2024.
Their priority ought to be beating Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Six months from November, his GOP challengers should be hammering Covid lockdowns and inflation. “Do I think that the election was rigged from the very beginning against Donald Trump ?” former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch told a radio show last week. “Yes, absolutely.” Mr. Gableman has called on lawmakers to “look at the option of decertification of the 2020 Wisconsin presidential election.”
What option? Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for President Biden were counted on Jan. 6, 2021. There is no mechanism to nullify them. A resolution to “decertify” is akin to a voter shouting at the end of the bar at 2 a.m. that his 2020 ballot is hereby rescinded.
Mr. Gableman has already issued his report, which includes both points of concern and also red herrings. He cites a handful of examples of residents in nursing homes who cast ballots despite being allegedly incapable. In one case, family “provided copies of that resident’s signature against the signature on the absentee envelope, and they do not match.”
Manipulation of the elderly happens. In February a nursing-home worker in Michigan received 45 days in jail, plus probation. She allegedly forged signatures on ballot applications for residents who hadn’t asked to vote. If that took place in Wisconsin, it should be prosecuted. Yet it’s tricky: Only a judge can strip a Wisconsinite’s franchise. Even people under guardianship can be eligible to vote.
Wisconsin’s approach to this fraught problem is to have Special Voting Deputies (SVDs) who supervise absentee ballots in nursing homes. But when Covid hit in 2020, such facilities barred visitors. The bipartisan state elections commission voted to suspend sending SVDs into nursing homes. Mr. Gableman says this was illegal and enabled abuse. Possibly, though commissioners have defended it as an open public decision to avoid disenfranchising the elderly.
Mr. Gableman’s report claims that at many unnamed nursing homes, including in Milwaukee County, 100% of registered voters cast ballots. Is it true? He doesn’t show his work. The city of Milwaukee’s elections chief says the real figure for her area is 79%, with some facilities as low as 36%. Kenosha says it had 458 registered voters with addresses in residential facilities, and 388 cast ballots.
The Racine sheriff investigated a nursing home with 200 beds and 42 votes, eight from people allegedly incapable. But it doesn’t sound like a coordinated scheme to help Mr. Biden. “If a resident could only point at the ballot,” an investigator said, “that’s what the employee of the facility would mark.” To give a sense of scale, the state election commission says in 2016 there were 17,176 total SVD votes. Mr. Trump lost in 2020 by 20,682.
Mr. Gableman recapitulates GOP complaints about private funds sent to local election offices in 2020 from a nonprofit tied to Mark Zuckerberg. In Wisconsin most of the cash went to five cities. This practice should be banned, because official voter education can easily bleed into get-out-the-vote drives for select constituencies. But courts have said it wasn’t illegal. Mr. Gableman’s assertion that the nonprofit grants constituted “election bribery” is a stretch.
He takes aim at voting equipment from ES&S, which can include wireless modems. “One municipality,” the report alleges, “admitted that these machines had these modems and were connected to the internet on election night. The reason given was to ‘transmit data’ about votes to the county clerks.” In Green Bay, Mr. Gableman claims, ES&S machines “were connected to a secret, hidden Wi-Fi access point.”
ES&S disputes almost every syllable. “Green Bay voting machines have no wireless connection capability,” the company says. Elsewhere in Wisconsin, ES&S scanners use modems to transmit unofficial results on election night. Yet they “do not connect to the public internet, but instead use private network configurations specifically designed for high-security applications.” The final, official tallies later “are physically uploaded at election headquarters.”
Republicans have valid gripes about how the 2020 election was run. But it isn’t hard to figure out what flipped Wisconsin. Many voters, Republicans included, didn’t want four more years of Mr. Trump’s antics. In some suburban wards, 10.5% of Mr. Biden’s voters picked the GOP for Congress. This beats the evidence of vote fraud detected by everyone who has looked.
Mr. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 on his own, and if Republicans keep chasing ghosts, he will also help them lose in 2022.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-republ ... 2#cxrecs_s
The midterm election is approaching, but the GOP won’t give up 2020.
Michael Gableman isn’t a secret Democratic double agent, but he’s sure acting like one. Mr. Gableman, a former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, was hired by the GOP Assembly to investigate the 2020 election. Last week he wrangled an extension. At this rate, Wisconsin Republicans might keep trying to undo the 2020 presidential result all the way to Election Day 2022, or 2024.
Their priority ought to be beating Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Six months from November, his GOP challengers should be hammering Covid lockdowns and inflation. “Do I think that the election was rigged from the very beginning against Donald Trump ?” former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch told a radio show last week. “Yes, absolutely.” Mr. Gableman has called on lawmakers to “look at the option of decertification of the 2020 Wisconsin presidential election.”
What option? Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for President Biden were counted on Jan. 6, 2021. There is no mechanism to nullify them. A resolution to “decertify” is akin to a voter shouting at the end of the bar at 2 a.m. that his 2020 ballot is hereby rescinded.
Mr. Gableman has already issued his report, which includes both points of concern and also red herrings. He cites a handful of examples of residents in nursing homes who cast ballots despite being allegedly incapable. In one case, family “provided copies of that resident’s signature against the signature on the absentee envelope, and they do not match.”
Manipulation of the elderly happens. In February a nursing-home worker in Michigan received 45 days in jail, plus probation. She allegedly forged signatures on ballot applications for residents who hadn’t asked to vote. If that took place in Wisconsin, it should be prosecuted. Yet it’s tricky: Only a judge can strip a Wisconsinite’s franchise. Even people under guardianship can be eligible to vote.
Wisconsin’s approach to this fraught problem is to have Special Voting Deputies (SVDs) who supervise absentee ballots in nursing homes. But when Covid hit in 2020, such facilities barred visitors. The bipartisan state elections commission voted to suspend sending SVDs into nursing homes. Mr. Gableman says this was illegal and enabled abuse. Possibly, though commissioners have defended it as an open public decision to avoid disenfranchising the elderly.
Mr. Gableman’s report claims that at many unnamed nursing homes, including in Milwaukee County, 100% of registered voters cast ballots. Is it true? He doesn’t show his work. The city of Milwaukee’s elections chief says the real figure for her area is 79%, with some facilities as low as 36%. Kenosha says it had 458 registered voters with addresses in residential facilities, and 388 cast ballots.
The Racine sheriff investigated a nursing home with 200 beds and 42 votes, eight from people allegedly incapable. But it doesn’t sound like a coordinated scheme to help Mr. Biden. “If a resident could only point at the ballot,” an investigator said, “that’s what the employee of the facility would mark.” To give a sense of scale, the state election commission says in 2016 there were 17,176 total SVD votes. Mr. Trump lost in 2020 by 20,682.
Mr. Gableman recapitulates GOP complaints about private funds sent to local election offices in 2020 from a nonprofit tied to Mark Zuckerberg. In Wisconsin most of the cash went to five cities. This practice should be banned, because official voter education can easily bleed into get-out-the-vote drives for select constituencies. But courts have said it wasn’t illegal. Mr. Gableman’s assertion that the nonprofit grants constituted “election bribery” is a stretch.
He takes aim at voting equipment from ES&S, which can include wireless modems. “One municipality,” the report alleges, “admitted that these machines had these modems and were connected to the internet on election night. The reason given was to ‘transmit data’ about votes to the county clerks.” In Green Bay, Mr. Gableman claims, ES&S machines “were connected to a secret, hidden Wi-Fi access point.”
ES&S disputes almost every syllable. “Green Bay voting machines have no wireless connection capability,” the company says. Elsewhere in Wisconsin, ES&S scanners use modems to transmit unofficial results on election night. Yet they “do not connect to the public internet, but instead use private network configurations specifically designed for high-security applications.” The final, official tallies later “are physically uploaded at election headquarters.”
Republicans have valid gripes about how the 2020 election was run. But it isn’t hard to figure out what flipped Wisconsin. Many voters, Republicans included, didn’t want four more years of Mr. Trump’s antics. In some suburban wards, 10.5% of Mr. Biden’s voters picked the GOP for Congress. This beats the evidence of vote fraud detected by everyone who has looked.
Mr. Trump lost Wisconsin in 2020 on his own, and if Republicans keep chasing ghosts, he will also help them lose in 2022.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-republ ... 2#cxrecs_s
Re: TrumpReich in action
From WAPO tonight:
"Republicans continue to block coronavirus funding as the White House warned of possible surges this fall that could infect up to 100 million people. The White House says it has already committed most of the existing public health funds in the government’s coffers, and additional money is needed to prepare for the projected surge in the fall. But Republicans have held up the covid aid package over an unrelated immigration dispute. "
"Texas officials used roughly $1 billion in coronavirus funding intended to pay front-line workers and purchase protective equipment to finance a campaign to arrest migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. "
Most Americans clueless ; the Dems flummoxed.
"Republicans continue to block coronavirus funding as the White House warned of possible surges this fall that could infect up to 100 million people. The White House says it has already committed most of the existing public health funds in the government’s coffers, and additional money is needed to prepare for the projected surge in the fall. But Republicans have held up the covid aid package over an unrelated immigration dispute. "
"Texas officials used roughly $1 billion in coronavirus funding intended to pay front-line workers and purchase protective equipment to finance a campaign to arrest migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. "
Most Americans clueless ; the Dems flummoxed.
Re: TrumpReich in action
Most Americans clueless ; the Dems flummoxed.
Don't you mean "deplorable"?
Don't you mean "deplorable"?
Re: TrumpReich in action
From the New Yorker Magazine Feb.20,2022:
Another Risk in Overturning Roe
The decision rejects the idea of fetal personhood—which anti-abortion groups have been pushing on state legislatures.
By Jia Tolentino
February 20, 2022
January 22nd marked the forty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade—and, likely, the last year that its protections will remain standing. In December, during oral arguments, the Supreme Court’s six conservative Justices signalled their intention to uphold a Mississippi law that, in banning almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, defies Roe’s protections. Most of those Justices seemed prepared to overturn Roe entirely. Without Roe, which prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability—at twenty-eight weeks when the law was decided, and closer to twenty-two weeks now—abortion could become mostly inaccessible and illegal in at least twenty states.
Some of the potential ramifications are obvious. The majority of people who get abortions are already mothers, and seventy-five per cent live near or below the federal poverty line. It is the least advantaged of this disadvantaged group who will be unable to cobble together the time, money, and child care required to travel across state lines to determine their own reproductive futures. Some will be able to self-administer abortions through telemedicine and mail-order pills—a safe and increasingly common method for early pregnancies. But, for those who can’t, the long-term consequences could be severe. The Turnaway Study, a research project that tracked a thousand women seeking abortions in the United States in the course of five years, found that women denied an abortion have an almost four times greater chance of living below the federal poverty line than women who were not denied one, as well as an increased risk of serious health problems; and their children are more likely to grow up in an abusive environment.
But there are other severe, metastasizing consequences that could follow Roe’s repeal. Roe rejects the idea of fetal personhood, which is a pillar of the anti-abortion movement. It also repudiates the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment grants equal protection, and consequently equal legal standing, to fetuses. (That claim was used as early as 1971, when a lawyer filed suit against the state of New York over its liberalized abortion law, and it has been resuscitated by organizations such as the March for Life, whose 2022 theme is “Equality Begins in the Womb.”) The Supreme Court remains a distance away from this extremist position—even Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Constitution applies only to “walking-around persons.” Still, anti-abortion groups have been pushing fetal personhood on state legislatures, which have introduced more than two hundred pieces of legislation supporting it in the past decade. Most of the bills have failed; they are unpopular as well as unconstitutional. But, in 2019, Georgia passed a near-total abortion ban that allows a fetus to be claimed as a dependent on one’s taxes. (The same year, a judge in Alabama allowed a man to sue an abortion clinic on behalf of an aborted embryo’s estate.) The Georgia law is currently before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, awaiting the Supreme Court’s Mississippi ruling. If such laws can no longer be challenged at the federal level, they will surely begin to proliferate in earnest.
Recent events in Oklahoma provide an example of what might follow. Though the state’s Supreme Court struck down a fetal-personhood amendment to the state constitution in 2012, the idea has been affirmed in other ways. In 2015, state law was amended to require that any fetal death past twelve weeks be reported as a stillbirth. The Humanity of the Unborn Child Act, passed in 2016, requires that the state department of health “clearly and consistently teach that abortion kills a living human being.” Since 2017, according to a report by the Frontier, an Oklahoma journalism nonprofit, at least forty-five women in that state have been charged with child abuse, child neglect, or manslaughter because of drug use during pregnancy. In 2020, according to the Frontier, the district attorney for Kay and Noble Counties charged seven women with felony child neglect for using marijuana during pregnancy, even though some of them had medical-marijuana licenses. The charge does not require the state to demonstrate actual harm.
The same year, the district attorney for Comanche and Cotton Counties charged three women—Brittney Poolaw, Ashley Traister, and Emily Akers—with manslaughter after they miscarried at seventeen weeks, twenty-one weeks, and twenty weeks pregnant, respectively. The fetuses were autopsied, as necessitated by the 2015 change in the law, and each tested positive for methamphetamine. As thirteen physicians and researchers recently affirmed in an amicus brief in support of Akers, studies have shown that meth use is associated with issues connected to low birth weight, but not with miscarriage or stillbirth. Traister pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Akers’s case was dismissed due to lack of evidence, but Comanche County has appealed. Poolaw was incarcerated for eighteen months before being convicted by a jury that deliberated for less than three hours; she was sentenced, at age nineteen, to the minimum sentence of four years.
These cases are not anomalous—they’re part of an intensifying pattern. In the late eighties and early nineties, at least a hundred and sixty women who used drugs while pregnant were charged with child neglect and distribution of drugs to minors. Between 2006 and 2016, according to ProPublica, some five hundred Alabama women were charged with felony chemical endangerment for using drugs during pregnancy, even in cases in which the drugs were prescribed by doctors. One woman, Katie Darovitz, was arrested when her son was two weeks old and healthy; she had controlled a seizure disorder with marijuana after her doctors advised her that her normal medication could be unsafe for pregnancy. (The case was eventually dismissed.)
Every year, there are about a million miscarriages in the United States. Under the doctrine of fetal personhood, these common, complicated, and profoundly intimate losses could become legally subject to surveillance and criminalization. The blame, as always, would fall on individual behavior, not on the chromosomal or placental abnormalities that often cause miscarriage, or the social factors that have been proven to increase a person’s risk of losing a pregnancy: poor nutrition, limited health-care access, night shifts and long hours, exposure to environmental toxins. Poverty and racism pose an unequivocal threat to fetal life and child well-being. In a post-Roe world, poor and minority women would find themselves not protected but targeted for further suffering. ♦
Another Risk in Overturning Roe
The decision rejects the idea of fetal personhood—which anti-abortion groups have been pushing on state legislatures.
By Jia Tolentino
February 20, 2022
January 22nd marked the forty-ninth anniversary of Roe v. Wade—and, likely, the last year that its protections will remain standing. In December, during oral arguments, the Supreme Court’s six conservative Justices signalled their intention to uphold a Mississippi law that, in banning almost all abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, defies Roe’s protections. Most of those Justices seemed prepared to overturn Roe entirely. Without Roe, which prohibits states from banning abortion before fetal viability—at twenty-eight weeks when the law was decided, and closer to twenty-two weeks now—abortion could become mostly inaccessible and illegal in at least twenty states.
Some of the potential ramifications are obvious. The majority of people who get abortions are already mothers, and seventy-five per cent live near or below the federal poverty line. It is the least advantaged of this disadvantaged group who will be unable to cobble together the time, money, and child care required to travel across state lines to determine their own reproductive futures. Some will be able to self-administer abortions through telemedicine and mail-order pills—a safe and increasingly common method for early pregnancies. But, for those who can’t, the long-term consequences could be severe. The Turnaway Study, a research project that tracked a thousand women seeking abortions in the United States in the course of five years, found that women denied an abortion have an almost four times greater chance of living below the federal poverty line than women who were not denied one, as well as an increased risk of serious health problems; and their children are more likely to grow up in an abusive environment.
But there are other severe, metastasizing consequences that could follow Roe’s repeal. Roe rejects the idea of fetal personhood, which is a pillar of the anti-abortion movement. It also repudiates the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment grants equal protection, and consequently equal legal standing, to fetuses. (That claim was used as early as 1971, when a lawyer filed suit against the state of New York over its liberalized abortion law, and it has been resuscitated by organizations such as the March for Life, whose 2022 theme is “Equality Begins in the Womb.”) The Supreme Court remains a distance away from this extremist position—even Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Constitution applies only to “walking-around persons.” Still, anti-abortion groups have been pushing fetal personhood on state legislatures, which have introduced more than two hundred pieces of legislation supporting it in the past decade. Most of the bills have failed; they are unpopular as well as unconstitutional. But, in 2019, Georgia passed a near-total abortion ban that allows a fetus to be claimed as a dependent on one’s taxes. (The same year, a judge in Alabama allowed a man to sue an abortion clinic on behalf of an aborted embryo’s estate.) The Georgia law is currently before the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, awaiting the Supreme Court’s Mississippi ruling. If such laws can no longer be challenged at the federal level, they will surely begin to proliferate in earnest.
Recent events in Oklahoma provide an example of what might follow. Though the state’s Supreme Court struck down a fetal-personhood amendment to the state constitution in 2012, the idea has been affirmed in other ways. In 2015, state law was amended to require that any fetal death past twelve weeks be reported as a stillbirth. The Humanity of the Unborn Child Act, passed in 2016, requires that the state department of health “clearly and consistently teach that abortion kills a living human being.” Since 2017, according to a report by the Frontier, an Oklahoma journalism nonprofit, at least forty-five women in that state have been charged with child abuse, child neglect, or manslaughter because of drug use during pregnancy. In 2020, according to the Frontier, the district attorney for Kay and Noble Counties charged seven women with felony child neglect for using marijuana during pregnancy, even though some of them had medical-marijuana licenses. The charge does not require the state to demonstrate actual harm.
The same year, the district attorney for Comanche and Cotton Counties charged three women—Brittney Poolaw, Ashley Traister, and Emily Akers—with manslaughter after they miscarried at seventeen weeks, twenty-one weeks, and twenty weeks pregnant, respectively. The fetuses were autopsied, as necessitated by the 2015 change in the law, and each tested positive for methamphetamine. As thirteen physicians and researchers recently affirmed in an amicus brief in support of Akers, studies have shown that meth use is associated with issues connected to low birth weight, but not with miscarriage or stillbirth. Traister pleaded guilty and is awaiting sentencing. Akers’s case was dismissed due to lack of evidence, but Comanche County has appealed. Poolaw was incarcerated for eighteen months before being convicted by a jury that deliberated for less than three hours; she was sentenced, at age nineteen, to the minimum sentence of four years.
These cases are not anomalous—they’re part of an intensifying pattern. In the late eighties and early nineties, at least a hundred and sixty women who used drugs while pregnant were charged with child neglect and distribution of drugs to minors. Between 2006 and 2016, according to ProPublica, some five hundred Alabama women were charged with felony chemical endangerment for using drugs during pregnancy, even in cases in which the drugs were prescribed by doctors. One woman, Katie Darovitz, was arrested when her son was two weeks old and healthy; she had controlled a seizure disorder with marijuana after her doctors advised her that her normal medication could be unsafe for pregnancy. (The case was eventually dismissed.)
Every year, there are about a million miscarriages in the United States. Under the doctrine of fetal personhood, these common, complicated, and profoundly intimate losses could become legally subject to surveillance and criminalization. The blame, as always, would fall on individual behavior, not on the chromosomal or placental abnormalities that often cause miscarriage, or the social factors that have been proven to increase a person’s risk of losing a pregnancy: poor nutrition, limited health-care access, night shifts and long hours, exposure to environmental toxins. Poverty and racism pose an unequivocal threat to fetal life and child well-being. In a post-Roe world, poor and minority women would find themselves not protected but targeted for further suffering. ♦
Re: TrumpReich in action
The Most Pivotal Elections in 2022 Are Not the Ones You Think
May 12, 2022
By Barbara McQuade
Ms. McQuade, who teaches law at the University of Michigan, oversaw voting rights suits as U.S. attorney for Michigan’s Eastern District.
The fate of our democracy doesn’t hinge on the battle for the House or the fight for control of the Senate, but on state elections for a once sleepy office: secretaries of state.
No elected officials will be more pivotal to protecting democracy — or subverting it — than secretaries of state. While their responsibilities vary from state to state, most oversee elections, a role in which they wield a tremendous amount of power. Secretaries of state own the bully pulpit on voting, and they control the machinery of elections.
They also have a platform to spread disinformation, such as false claims that voting by mail is not secure. A Republican secretary of state could reduce the number of ballot boxes or polling places in Democratic areas and limit staffing to create long lines that dissuade potential voters. They can also refuse to certify the results in particular counties or even the entire state. In a close presidential race, if even one secretary of state in a swing state were to put his thumb on the scale, we could see an election that really is stolen.
This has happened before. In 2000, Katherine Harris, Florida’s secretary of state, halted the recount process and certified George W. Bush, for whom she served as a campaign chairwoman, as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes. But our current political moment is even more fraught, as Donald Trump casts doubt on the last election, whipping his supporters into frenzy while Republican field generals quietly maneuver conservative hard-liners into positions of power.
Twenty-seven states will choose a secretary of state this fall, and in 17 of those states, at least one of the Republican candidates for the office actively denies that President Biden won the 2020 election. Fourteen candidates have formed the America First S.O.S. Coalition, which aims to “reverse electoral fraud” by eliminating mail-in ballots, requiring single-day voting and committing to “aggressive voter roll cleanup,” measures that could suppress thousands of Democratic votes. If they win office, Republicans will control the voting process in these five crucial swing states where the 2024 election may be decided:
One closely watched race will be in Georgia, where the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, is fighting for his political life in the May 24 primary after having refused Mr. Trump’s demands to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in that state. Although Mr. Raffensperger withstood Mr. Trump’s efforts in 2020, he has now joined the crusade warning against the threat of voter fraud, supporting Georgia’s restrictive new voting laws and citing “voter confidence” as the “No. 1 issue” American voters face.
His main primary opponent goes even further. Representative Jody Hice, a former pastor endorsed by Mr. Trump, is an election denier who has said that “I believe with all my heart” that the will of Georgia voters was subverted in 2020. Republicans have held this office since 2006, so most likely, one of these two men will be in control in 2024.
In Michigan, the Democrats are in a stronger position. The Democratic incumbent, Jocelyn Benson, will face Kristina Karamo, a community college instructor endorsed by Mr. Trump, this fall. Ms. Benson, a former election law professor, literally wrote the book on the role secretaries of state play in protecting the democratic process and resolutely withstood challenges to Michigan’s 2020 election.
Her opponent, on the other hand, has made debunked claims that she witnessed election fraud while observing poll workers in Detroit in 2020 and said that the Capitol riot was conducted by “antifa posing as Trump supporters.” Mr. Trump has been stumping for Ms. Karamo for a reason: “This is not just about 2022,” he said at a recent rally. “This is about making sure Michigan is not rigged and stolen again in 2024.” Recent polling shows Ms. Benson with a 14-point lead over Ms. Karamo, but that margin is small considering Ms. Benson’s greater name recognition.
In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state is appointed, so the tossup governor’s race will decide who ends up overseeing elections. While the Democratic contender for governor, Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, has made voting rights a cornerstone of his campaign, some of the Republican candidates seem determined to undercut them. Recent polling shows State Senator Doug Mastriano, a retired Army colonel with a Ph.D. in history, leading the rest of the Republican candidates.
Mr. Mastriano has embraced Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election; according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, he spoke with the president in the days after the election and pushed for a new slate of electors to be sent to Congress. Videos show him and his wife wandering through the barricades after rioters — some of whom he’d paid to send to Washington — breached the Capitol. His election as governor is a strong possibility in a state that tends to seesaw between Democrats and Republicans.
Other candidates for secretary of state include Mark Finchem in Arizona and Jim Marchant in Nevada. Mr. Finchem, a state representative who attended the Stop the Steal Rally in Washington last year, has introduced a resolution to decertify the results of the 2020 election in three big counties and a bill to empower the Arizona Legislature to reject election results. As of the end of the first quarter, Mr. Finchem led all the other candidates in the race in fund-raising, making him the most likely to win the Republican primary and a strong candidate in the general election.
Mr. Marchant has followed the same campaign playbook in Nevada. A former state legislator, he has not only called it “almost statistically impossible that Joe Biden won” the state, but also said he would not have certified Nevada’s slate of electors had he been secretary of state in 2020; indeed, he pushed for his state to submit an alternative slate. While Nevada has gone to the Democratic candidate in the past four presidential elections, three of its past four secretaries of state have been Republicans, and this race could go either way.
For Democrats to fend off the America First slate, they will need to invest in these races, helping candidates build the name recognition they need to combat the onslaught from the right. That will take time, money and a strategy to raise awareness about the crucial role these offices play in protecting our democracy. A nationwide effort like the “SoS Project,” which was started by a group of Democrats following the 2004 election and folded several years later, could help. Individuals can also help by volunteering for secretary of state candidates and by talking to their neighbors and on social media about the importance of these positions.
Races for other offices may attract bigger names, but elections for secretary of state may bring about the most significant shifts in power in 2022. As Mr. Trump has said, sometimes the “vote counter is more important than the candidate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/opin ... races.html
May 12, 2022
By Barbara McQuade
Ms. McQuade, who teaches law at the University of Michigan, oversaw voting rights suits as U.S. attorney for Michigan’s Eastern District.
The fate of our democracy doesn’t hinge on the battle for the House or the fight for control of the Senate, but on state elections for a once sleepy office: secretaries of state.
No elected officials will be more pivotal to protecting democracy — or subverting it — than secretaries of state. While their responsibilities vary from state to state, most oversee elections, a role in which they wield a tremendous amount of power. Secretaries of state own the bully pulpit on voting, and they control the machinery of elections.
They also have a platform to spread disinformation, such as false claims that voting by mail is not secure. A Republican secretary of state could reduce the number of ballot boxes or polling places in Democratic areas and limit staffing to create long lines that dissuade potential voters. They can also refuse to certify the results in particular counties or even the entire state. In a close presidential race, if even one secretary of state in a swing state were to put his thumb on the scale, we could see an election that really is stolen.
This has happened before. In 2000, Katherine Harris, Florida’s secretary of state, halted the recount process and certified George W. Bush, for whom she served as a campaign chairwoman, as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes. But our current political moment is even more fraught, as Donald Trump casts doubt on the last election, whipping his supporters into frenzy while Republican field generals quietly maneuver conservative hard-liners into positions of power.
Twenty-seven states will choose a secretary of state this fall, and in 17 of those states, at least one of the Republican candidates for the office actively denies that President Biden won the 2020 election. Fourteen candidates have formed the America First S.O.S. Coalition, which aims to “reverse electoral fraud” by eliminating mail-in ballots, requiring single-day voting and committing to “aggressive voter roll cleanup,” measures that could suppress thousands of Democratic votes. If they win office, Republicans will control the voting process in these five crucial swing states where the 2024 election may be decided:
One closely watched race will be in Georgia, where the Republican incumbent, Brad Raffensperger, is fighting for his political life in the May 24 primary after having refused Mr. Trump’s demands to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in that state. Although Mr. Raffensperger withstood Mr. Trump’s efforts in 2020, he has now joined the crusade warning against the threat of voter fraud, supporting Georgia’s restrictive new voting laws and citing “voter confidence” as the “No. 1 issue” American voters face.
His main primary opponent goes even further. Representative Jody Hice, a former pastor endorsed by Mr. Trump, is an election denier who has said that “I believe with all my heart” that the will of Georgia voters was subverted in 2020. Republicans have held this office since 2006, so most likely, one of these two men will be in control in 2024.
In Michigan, the Democrats are in a stronger position. The Democratic incumbent, Jocelyn Benson, will face Kristina Karamo, a community college instructor endorsed by Mr. Trump, this fall. Ms. Benson, a former election law professor, literally wrote the book on the role secretaries of state play in protecting the democratic process and resolutely withstood challenges to Michigan’s 2020 election.
Her opponent, on the other hand, has made debunked claims that she witnessed election fraud while observing poll workers in Detroit in 2020 and said that the Capitol riot was conducted by “antifa posing as Trump supporters.” Mr. Trump has been stumping for Ms. Karamo for a reason: “This is not just about 2022,” he said at a recent rally. “This is about making sure Michigan is not rigged and stolen again in 2024.” Recent polling shows Ms. Benson with a 14-point lead over Ms. Karamo, but that margin is small considering Ms. Benson’s greater name recognition.
In Pennsylvania, the secretary of state is appointed, so the tossup governor’s race will decide who ends up overseeing elections. While the Democratic contender for governor, Josh Shapiro, the state attorney general, has made voting rights a cornerstone of his campaign, some of the Republican candidates seem determined to undercut them. Recent polling shows State Senator Doug Mastriano, a retired Army colonel with a Ph.D. in history, leading the rest of the Republican candidates.
Mr. Mastriano has embraced Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election; according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, he spoke with the president in the days after the election and pushed for a new slate of electors to be sent to Congress. Videos show him and his wife wandering through the barricades after rioters — some of whom he’d paid to send to Washington — breached the Capitol. His election as governor is a strong possibility in a state that tends to seesaw between Democrats and Republicans.
Other candidates for secretary of state include Mark Finchem in Arizona and Jim Marchant in Nevada. Mr. Finchem, a state representative who attended the Stop the Steal Rally in Washington last year, has introduced a resolution to decertify the results of the 2020 election in three big counties and a bill to empower the Arizona Legislature to reject election results. As of the end of the first quarter, Mr. Finchem led all the other candidates in the race in fund-raising, making him the most likely to win the Republican primary and a strong candidate in the general election.
Mr. Marchant has followed the same campaign playbook in Nevada. A former state legislator, he has not only called it “almost statistically impossible that Joe Biden won” the state, but also said he would not have certified Nevada’s slate of electors had he been secretary of state in 2020; indeed, he pushed for his state to submit an alternative slate. While Nevada has gone to the Democratic candidate in the past four presidential elections, three of its past four secretaries of state have been Republicans, and this race could go either way.
For Democrats to fend off the America First slate, they will need to invest in these races, helping candidates build the name recognition they need to combat the onslaught from the right. That will take time, money and a strategy to raise awareness about the crucial role these offices play in protecting our democracy. A nationwide effort like the “SoS Project,” which was started by a group of Democrats following the 2004 election and folded several years later, could help. Individuals can also help by volunteering for secretary of state candidates and by talking to their neighbors and on social media about the importance of these positions.
Races for other offices may attract bigger names, but elections for secretary of state may bring about the most significant shifts in power in 2022. As Mr. Trump has said, sometimes the “vote counter is more important than the candidate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/opin ... races.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
John Eastman Pressed Pennsylvania Legislator to Throw Out Biden Votes
The lawyer argued that mail ballots in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election could be culled in a way that would reverse President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in an electorally critical state.
By Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer
May 11, 2022
WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen.
Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time.
The emails were the latest evidence of just how far Mr. Trump and his allies were willing to go in the weeks after Election Day to keep him in power — complete with anti-democratic plans to install fake pro-Trump electors and reject the votes of Biden supporters. Mr. Eastman would go on to champion the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, an idea Mr. Pence rejected even as Mr. Trump was promoting the protests that turned into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
On Dec. 4, 2020, using his university email account, Mr. Eastman wrote to State Representative Russell H. Diamond, Republican of Pennsylvania, with plans for the legislature to appoint pro-Trump electors.
He suggested that a mathematical equation could be applied to the vote tallies to reject mail-in ballots for candidates at “a prorated amount.”
Mr. Eastman said he was basing his recommendations on his belief that the Trump legal team had presented “ample evidence of sufficient anomalies and illegal votes to have turned the election from Trump to Biden” at public hearings around the country, including in Pennsylvania. But he admitted that he had not actually watched the hearings.
“Having done that math, you’d be left with a significant Trump lead that would bolster the argument for the legislature adopting a slate of Trump electors — perfectly within your authority to do anyway, but now bolstered by the untainted popular vote,” Mr. Eastman wrote. “That would help provide some cover.”
He also encouraged Mr. Diamond to have the legislature make a specific determination that “the slate of electors certified by the governor,” and chosen by the voters, was “null and void.”
In one email, Mr. Diamond responded that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had not presented strong evidence of fraud at the Pennsylvania hearing.
“Honestly, the Trump legal team was not exactly stellar at PA’s hearing, failed to provide the affidavits of their witnesses and made a glaring error by purporting that more ballots had been returned than mailed out,” he wrote.
On Dec. 13, the day before all 50 states were set to cast their votes in the Electoral College, Mr. Eastman again urged Mr. Diamond to keep up with the plot to create an alternate slate of electors in Pennsylvania.
“The electors absolutely need to meet,” Mr. Eastman wrote to the lawmaker. “Then, if the legislature gets some spine, AND (politically) proofs of fraud and/or illegal votes sufficient to have altered the results of the election is forthcoming, those electoral votes will be available to be certified by the legislature.”
In one email, Mr. Diamond introduced Mr. Eastman to the Republican House majority leader in the state, crediting Mr. Eastman with “opening my eyes to our ability to exercise our plenary authority to decertify presidential electors (without ANY ‘evidence’ of retail ‘voter fraud’).”
A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
In a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Diamond said he first learned about Mr. Eastman and his theories about the power of state lawmakers to shape elections when the lawyer testified in front of the Georgia legislature in early December 2020.
Mr. Diamond added that when he started to correspond with Mr. Eastman about election results in Pennsylvania, he thought that Mr. Eastman was merely a law professor and did not realize that he was associated with the Trump campaign. Mr. Diamond said he never pursued the idea of disqualifying mail ballots containing votes for Mr. Biden, though Pennsylvania Republicans tried multiple avenues to fight the election results, including filing a lawsuit, appealing to members of Congress and conducting a forensic investigation.
The university released more than 700 of Mr. Eastman’s emails and other documents to The New York Times in response to a public information request. The documents were released earlier to the Colorado Ethics Institute, and were reported earlier by The Denver Post and Politico.
The Colorado Ethics Institute, a nonprofit that tries to hold public officials accountable to ethics and transparency rules, provided the emails on April 19 to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the nonprofit, called for a “thorough audit” of Mr. Eastman’s tenure at the university to “determine the school’s connection — wittingly or unwittingly — to one of the darkest days in the history of this country.”
A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.
Justice Department officials have said they are investigating some of the schemes that Mr. Eastman supported to overturn the election — chief among them, a plan to use so-called alternate slates of electors in key swing states that were won by Mr. Biden. But Mr. Diamond said he had not been contacted by anyone from the Justice Department.
The records show the university paid for Mr. Eastman’s trip the weekend after the election to an academic conference in Philadelphia, where he told The Times that his role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power began. At the time of the trip, Mr. Trump’s closest aides, including Corey Lewandowski, were at a nearby hotel putting together a legal brief to challenge the results in Pennsylvania. One of Mr. Trump’s aides reached out to Mr. Eastman to see whether he could go to the hotel to help Mr. Trump’s team.
In the beginning of December, Mr. Trump called to see whether Mr. Eastman could help bring legal action directly before the Supreme Court. In the days that followed, Mr. Eastman filed two briefs with the court on Mr. Trump’s behalf, but those efforts quickly failed.
The emails also paint a portrait of Mr. Eastman as a visiting professor in Colorado who was respected as a conservative thinker — winning praise from conservative students, including one who thanked him for “having the courage to stand up for your beliefs” and complained of being harassed by liberal professors “for being a white male” — until he fell into disrepute at the university as his efforts to overturn the election became known.
After more than 200 professors and students signed a petition against him for questioning the results of the election on Twitter, he wrote: “Oh, brother. These people are indefatigable.”
And he complained in emails that he was overworked, as he rushed to challenge the election on behalf of Mr. Trump and teach his classes over Zoom.
For a while, he retained the support of his supervisors, including one who cheered him on when Mr. Eastman told him he was doing legal work for Mr. Trump.
But after Mr. Eastman spoke at the pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the riot at the Capitol, baselessly claiming that Democrats had placed ballots in “a secret folder” inside voting machines in a bid to rig the results, he became a lightning rod for criticism.
That same afternoon, a former colleague at the university wrote him to say that he had engaged in “seditious actions” during his speech. Within hours Mr. Eastman fired back, calling the accusation “defamatory.”
As the days went on, Mr. Eastman defended himself against a blizzard of attacks from those who called him “a traitor” or worse.
He often disavowed the violence that erupted at the Capitol and sometimes blamed it on the leftist activists known as antifa.
Citing low enrollment, the university canceled Mr. Eastman’s spring courses and his contract expired with the college.
In the months since, more information has emerged about Mr. Eastman’s central role in trying to overturn the election, including writing a memo laying out steps he argued Mr. Pence could take to keep Mr. Trump in power.
In March, a federal judge ruled in a civil case that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump had most likely committed felonies as they pushed to overturn the election, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.
The actions taken by Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman, the judge found, amounted to “a coup in search of a legal theory.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/us/p ... ction.html
The lawyer argued that mail ballots in Pennsylvania in the 2020 election could be culled in a way that would reverse President Donald J. Trump’s defeat in an electorally critical state.
By Luke Broadwater and Alan Feuer
May 11, 2022
WASHINGTON — Even by the standards of other ideas promoted by the conservative lawyer John Eastman to keep President Donald J. Trump in the White House after his election loss in 2020, a newly revealed strategy he proposed to take votes from Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Pennsylvania stands out as especially brazen.
Mr. Eastman pressed a Pennsylvania state lawmaker in December 2020 to carry out a plan to strip Mr. Biden of his win in that state by applying a mathematical equation to accepting the validity of mail ballots, which were most heavily used by Democrats during the pandemic, according to emails from Mr. Eastman released under a public records request by the University of Colorado Boulder, which employed him at the time.
The emails were the latest evidence of just how far Mr. Trump and his allies were willing to go in the weeks after Election Day to keep him in power — complete with anti-democratic plans to install fake pro-Trump electors and reject the votes of Biden supporters. Mr. Eastman would go on to champion the idea that Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally block congressional certification of Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory, an idea Mr. Pence rejected even as Mr. Trump was promoting the protests that turned into the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
On Dec. 4, 2020, using his university email account, Mr. Eastman wrote to State Representative Russell H. Diamond, Republican of Pennsylvania, with plans for the legislature to appoint pro-Trump electors.
He suggested that a mathematical equation could be applied to the vote tallies to reject mail-in ballots for candidates at “a prorated amount.”
Mr. Eastman said he was basing his recommendations on his belief that the Trump legal team had presented “ample evidence of sufficient anomalies and illegal votes to have turned the election from Trump to Biden” at public hearings around the country, including in Pennsylvania. But he admitted that he had not actually watched the hearings.
“Having done that math, you’d be left with a significant Trump lead that would bolster the argument for the legislature adopting a slate of Trump electors — perfectly within your authority to do anyway, but now bolstered by the untainted popular vote,” Mr. Eastman wrote. “That would help provide some cover.”
He also encouraged Mr. Diamond to have the legislature make a specific determination that “the slate of electors certified by the governor,” and chosen by the voters, was “null and void.”
In one email, Mr. Diamond responded that Mr. Trump’s lawyers had not presented strong evidence of fraud at the Pennsylvania hearing.
“Honestly, the Trump legal team was not exactly stellar at PA’s hearing, failed to provide the affidavits of their witnesses and made a glaring error by purporting that more ballots had been returned than mailed out,” he wrote.
On Dec. 13, the day before all 50 states were set to cast their votes in the Electoral College, Mr. Eastman again urged Mr. Diamond to keep up with the plot to create an alternate slate of electors in Pennsylvania.
“The electors absolutely need to meet,” Mr. Eastman wrote to the lawmaker. “Then, if the legislature gets some spine, AND (politically) proofs of fraud and/or illegal votes sufficient to have altered the results of the election is forthcoming, those electoral votes will be available to be certified by the legislature.”
In one email, Mr. Diamond introduced Mr. Eastman to the Republican House majority leader in the state, crediting Mr. Eastman with “opening my eyes to our ability to exercise our plenary authority to decertify presidential electors (without ANY ‘evidence’ of retail ‘voter fraud’).”
A lawyer for Mr. Eastman did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
In a brief interview on Tuesday, Mr. Diamond said he first learned about Mr. Eastman and his theories about the power of state lawmakers to shape elections when the lawyer testified in front of the Georgia legislature in early December 2020.
Mr. Diamond added that when he started to correspond with Mr. Eastman about election results in Pennsylvania, he thought that Mr. Eastman was merely a law professor and did not realize that he was associated with the Trump campaign. Mr. Diamond said he never pursued the idea of disqualifying mail ballots containing votes for Mr. Biden, though Pennsylvania Republicans tried multiple avenues to fight the election results, including filing a lawsuit, appealing to members of Congress and conducting a forensic investigation.
The university released more than 700 of Mr. Eastman’s emails and other documents to The New York Times in response to a public information request. The documents were released earlier to the Colorado Ethics Institute, and were reported earlier by The Denver Post and Politico.
The Colorado Ethics Institute, a nonprofit that tries to hold public officials accountable to ethics and transparency rules, provided the emails on April 19 to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.
Curtis Hubbard, a spokesman for the nonprofit, called for a “thorough audit” of Mr. Eastman’s tenure at the university to “determine the school’s connection — wittingly or unwittingly — to one of the darkest days in the history of this country.”
A spokesman for the committee declined to comment.
Justice Department officials have said they are investigating some of the schemes that Mr. Eastman supported to overturn the election — chief among them, a plan to use so-called alternate slates of electors in key swing states that were won by Mr. Biden. But Mr. Diamond said he had not been contacted by anyone from the Justice Department.
The records show the university paid for Mr. Eastman’s trip the weekend after the election to an academic conference in Philadelphia, where he told The Times that his role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to remain in power began. At the time of the trip, Mr. Trump’s closest aides, including Corey Lewandowski, were at a nearby hotel putting together a legal brief to challenge the results in Pennsylvania. One of Mr. Trump’s aides reached out to Mr. Eastman to see whether he could go to the hotel to help Mr. Trump’s team.
In the beginning of December, Mr. Trump called to see whether Mr. Eastman could help bring legal action directly before the Supreme Court. In the days that followed, Mr. Eastman filed two briefs with the court on Mr. Trump’s behalf, but those efforts quickly failed.
The emails also paint a portrait of Mr. Eastman as a visiting professor in Colorado who was respected as a conservative thinker — winning praise from conservative students, including one who thanked him for “having the courage to stand up for your beliefs” and complained of being harassed by liberal professors “for being a white male” — until he fell into disrepute at the university as his efforts to overturn the election became known.
After more than 200 professors and students signed a petition against him for questioning the results of the election on Twitter, he wrote: “Oh, brother. These people are indefatigable.”
And he complained in emails that he was overworked, as he rushed to challenge the election on behalf of Mr. Trump and teach his classes over Zoom.
For a while, he retained the support of his supervisors, including one who cheered him on when Mr. Eastman told him he was doing legal work for Mr. Trump.
But after Mr. Eastman spoke at the pro-Trump rally on Jan. 6 that preceded the riot at the Capitol, baselessly claiming that Democrats had placed ballots in “a secret folder” inside voting machines in a bid to rig the results, he became a lightning rod for criticism.
That same afternoon, a former colleague at the university wrote him to say that he had engaged in “seditious actions” during his speech. Within hours Mr. Eastman fired back, calling the accusation “defamatory.”
As the days went on, Mr. Eastman defended himself against a blizzard of attacks from those who called him “a traitor” or worse.
He often disavowed the violence that erupted at the Capitol and sometimes blamed it on the leftist activists known as antifa.
Citing low enrollment, the university canceled Mr. Eastman’s spring courses and his contract expired with the college.
In the months since, more information has emerged about Mr. Eastman’s central role in trying to overturn the election, including writing a memo laying out steps he argued Mr. Pence could take to keep Mr. Trump in power.
In March, a federal judge ruled in a civil case that Mr. Eastman and Mr. Trump had most likely committed felonies as they pushed to overturn the election, including obstructing the work of Congress and conspiring to defraud the United States.
The actions taken by Mr. Trump and Mr. Eastman, the judge found, amounted to “a coup in search of a legal theory.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/us/p ... ction.html
Re: TrumpReich in action
Gearing Up for G.O.P. Gains, White House Braces for Barrage of Inquiries
The turbulent aftermath of the Trump era is taking the possibility of a divided government to new levels of intensity, as some Republicans appear eager to target President Biden and his family.
By Charlie Savage and Michael S. Schmidt
May 14, 2022, 10:06 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s legal team is laying the groundwork to defend against an expected onslaught of oversight investigations by congressional Republicans, should they take one or both chambers in the midterm elections — including preparing for the possibility of impeachment as payback for the two impeachments of President Donald J. Trump.
As part of those preparations, Mr. Biden and his White House counsel, Dana Remus, have hired Richard A. Sauber, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer who is now the top lawyer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to oversee responses to subpoenas and other oversight efforts, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Mr. Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, and Ms. Remus have also been meeting for months to work out potential divisions of labor between White House lawyers and outside counsel, according to people briefed on the matter.
The arrangement is said to be aimed at respecting the limits of what taxpayer-funded lawyers should handle and ensuring that Mr. Biden’s two sets of lawyers do not mix work in a way that could inadvertently undermine executive and attorney-client privilege protecting what lawyers know from any subpoenas for their testimony or notes.
It is a routine dynamic of Washington life that when one party controls both elected branches of government, Congress goes easy on oversight. When government is divided, the opposition party is much more aggressive about wielding subpoenas and oversight hearings to try to uncover and highlight incompetence or wrongdoing by the executive branch.
But the turbulence of the Trump era and its aftermath are taking that to new levels of intensity, and some Republicans appear eager to focus on Mr. Biden and his family — particularly the foreign business dealings of his son Hunter Biden. A handful of far-right Republicans have already signed onto a flurry of impeachment resolutions.
Republicans have also signaled an intent to scrutinize various matters related to the pandemic that could reach into the White House, including the administration’s imposition of mask mandates and the extension of an evictions moratorium, both of which were later blocked in court. A particular target is Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top medical adviser in the Trump and Biden administrations who has become a villain to supporters of Mr. Trump.
And they have listed a series of other topics they intend to dig into, including the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the surge in migration across the southwestern border; another frequently mentioned target is the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas.
Late last year, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on a podcast that because House Democrats had twice impeached Mr. Trump — for withholding military aid to Ukraine while pressing it to open an investigation into the Bidens, and for “incitement of insurrection” over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — “there’ll be enormous pressure on a Republican House to begin impeachment proceedings” against Mr. Biden, “whether it’s justified or not.”
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will lose one or both chambers in the midterm elections, giving Republicans the power to open investigations and pursue subpoenas. Polls have suggested that Republicans are well positioned, but events — like the likelihood that Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court will soon end women’s constitutional right to abortion — could upend political dynamics before November.
Still, the party that does not control the presidency typically does well in the midterms. The decision to hire Mr. Sauber comes as Republicans crow on conservative news media and in town halls across the country about their plans to initiate ferocious oversight efforts if they return to power in 2023.
Mr. Sauber, a veteran Justice Department prosecutor, is set to start at the White House in several weeks, people familiar with the matter said. He spent years at the Robbins Russell law firm in Washington, where he specialized in representing companies and people facing congressional and other governmental investigations.
Among his clients was Susan Rice, a top official in the Obama and Biden administrations, during the Republican-led investigation into the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Another was Mary L. Schapiro, a former chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in 2011, when she was under scrutiny by both Congress and an inspector general.
Mr. Sauber, who is known as Dick, will have the title “special counsel to the president,” which no other White House lawyer in the Biden administration has had, the people said. That reflects the elevated role his oversight portfolio is anticipated to have next year compared with what it has been under the lawyer he is succeeding, Jonathan Su, a deputy White House counsel.
“Dick is an excellent lawyer who brings decades of experience that will be a valuable asset,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, adding that “we are ensuring the White House is prepared for the issues we are facing or will face in the future.”
The secretary of veterans affairs, Denis McDonough, praised Mr. Sauber’s work at the department. “He has a deep understanding of government,” Mr. McDonough said in a statement, noting that he would be a welcome addition to the White House.
The White House has also added Mr. Sams to focus full-time on oversight matters. In the 2020 election cycle, he was a campaign spokesman for Kamala Harris, who was then a Democratic presidential candidate and is now the vice president. Mr. Sams went on to work for the Department of Health and Human Services on pandemic-related issues.
As part of the planning sessions with the White House, Mr. Bauer has also raised the possibility of hiring outside firms with special expertise to assist him, according to people briefed on the talks.
Mr. Bauer, who now teaches at New York University School of Law, was a top lawyer to Senate Democrats during the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. In 2011, he was the White House counsel to President Barack Obama when Republicans took over the House and began investigating matters like the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking case.
Trump-supporting Republicans have been stoking expectations that they will turn the tables next year, particularly given the level of scrutiny that House Democrats have cast on Mr. Trump and his administration: two years of congressional investigations culminating in the two impeachments, followed by the Jan. 6 committee’s inquiry into the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, has also pledged to investigate Hunter Biden’s dealings and a cache of files that are said to have come from a laptop Mr. Biden abandoned in a repair shop. (People familiar with the matter have authenticated some emails that came from its hard drive to The New York Times, but numerous files attributed to it are circulating, and it is not clear whether all are legitimate.)
Mr. Comer said on Monday that he believed promising an inquiry into Mr. Biden’s son would bolster Republican turnout in the midterms. Voters have “suspected for a long time that Hunter Biden was a shady business guy,” he said, suggesting without evidence that both men had been “compromised” by Russian oligarchs.
The Justice Department has been examining whether Hunter Biden broke tax and foreign lobbying laws, a matter that is expected to be resolved in the coming months. Regardless of what Attorney General Merrick B. Garland decides, he is likely to face accusations from Republicans that he gave the president’s son preferential treatment.
Still, Republicans have been divided about whether it is smart to talk about impeachment already.
In April, Representative Greg Murphy, Republican of North Carolina, told Fox News that there were “plenty” of grounds to impeach Mr. Biden, citing the border crisis, Afghanistan and other ways he said the president had committed offenses “against the heart and soul of this country.” The dilemma, Mr. Murphy said, was that Ms. Harris, who would become president if Mr. Biden were removed, was worse.
A few days later, a Fox News host played that clip for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is likely to become speaker if Republicans take the House, and asked whether he would move to impeach Mr. Biden. Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, accused Democrats of using impeachment “for political reasons,” which he said Republicans would not do. Still, he vowed to hold the Biden administration accountable and follow the facts.
“We believe in the rule of law,” Mr. McCarthy said. “We’re not going to pick and choose just because somebody has power. We’re going to uphold the law. At any time, if someone breaks the law and the ramification becomes impeachment, we would move toward that. But we’re not going to use it for political purposes.”
But his comments drew immediate rebukes from a range of right-wing commentators and some lawmakers who had already endorsed impeachment resolutions. As the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack has shown — Mr. McCarthy at first said he would tell Mr. Trump to resign but then flipped to embracing him — he has a history of bending to his party’s winds.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/us/p ... 20Politics
The turbulent aftermath of the Trump era is taking the possibility of a divided government to new levels of intensity, as some Republicans appear eager to target President Biden and his family.
By Charlie Savage and Michael S. Schmidt
May 14, 2022, 10:06 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON — President Biden’s legal team is laying the groundwork to defend against an expected onslaught of oversight investigations by congressional Republicans, should they take one or both chambers in the midterm elections — including preparing for the possibility of impeachment as payback for the two impeachments of President Donald J. Trump.
As part of those preparations, Mr. Biden and his White House counsel, Dana Remus, have hired Richard A. Sauber, a longtime white-collar defense lawyer who is now the top lawyer at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to oversee responses to subpoenas and other oversight efforts, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
Mr. Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, and Ms. Remus have also been meeting for months to work out potential divisions of labor between White House lawyers and outside counsel, according to people briefed on the matter.
The arrangement is said to be aimed at respecting the limits of what taxpayer-funded lawyers should handle and ensuring that Mr. Biden’s two sets of lawyers do not mix work in a way that could inadvertently undermine executive and attorney-client privilege protecting what lawyers know from any subpoenas for their testimony or notes.
It is a routine dynamic of Washington life that when one party controls both elected branches of government, Congress goes easy on oversight. When government is divided, the opposition party is much more aggressive about wielding subpoenas and oversight hearings to try to uncover and highlight incompetence or wrongdoing by the executive branch.
But the turbulence of the Trump era and its aftermath are taking that to new levels of intensity, and some Republicans appear eager to focus on Mr. Biden and his family — particularly the foreign business dealings of his son Hunter Biden. A handful of far-right Republicans have already signed onto a flurry of impeachment resolutions.
Republicans have also signaled an intent to scrutinize various matters related to the pandemic that could reach into the White House, including the administration’s imposition of mask mandates and the extension of an evictions moratorium, both of which were later blocked in court. A particular target is Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top medical adviser in the Trump and Biden administrations who has become a villain to supporters of Mr. Trump.
And they have listed a series of other topics they intend to dig into, including the messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the surge in migration across the southwestern border; another frequently mentioned target is the secretary of homeland security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas.
Late last year, Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, said on a podcast that because House Democrats had twice impeached Mr. Trump — for withholding military aid to Ukraine while pressing it to open an investigation into the Bidens, and for “incitement of insurrection” over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot — “there’ll be enormous pressure on a Republican House to begin impeachment proceedings” against Mr. Biden, “whether it’s justified or not.”
It remains to be seen whether Democrats will lose one or both chambers in the midterm elections, giving Republicans the power to open investigations and pursue subpoenas. Polls have suggested that Republicans are well positioned, but events — like the likelihood that Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court will soon end women’s constitutional right to abortion — could upend political dynamics before November.
Still, the party that does not control the presidency typically does well in the midterms. The decision to hire Mr. Sauber comes as Republicans crow on conservative news media and in town halls across the country about their plans to initiate ferocious oversight efforts if they return to power in 2023.
Mr. Sauber, a veteran Justice Department prosecutor, is set to start at the White House in several weeks, people familiar with the matter said. He spent years at the Robbins Russell law firm in Washington, where he specialized in representing companies and people facing congressional and other governmental investigations.
Among his clients was Susan Rice, a top official in the Obama and Biden administrations, during the Republican-led investigation into the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya. Another was Mary L. Schapiro, a former chairwoman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in 2011, when she was under scrutiny by both Congress and an inspector general.
Mr. Sauber, who is known as Dick, will have the title “special counsel to the president,” which no other White House lawyer in the Biden administration has had, the people said. That reflects the elevated role his oversight portfolio is anticipated to have next year compared with what it has been under the lawyer he is succeeding, Jonathan Su, a deputy White House counsel.
“Dick is an excellent lawyer who brings decades of experience that will be a valuable asset,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement, adding that “we are ensuring the White House is prepared for the issues we are facing or will face in the future.”
The secretary of veterans affairs, Denis McDonough, praised Mr. Sauber’s work at the department. “He has a deep understanding of government,” Mr. McDonough said in a statement, noting that he would be a welcome addition to the White House.
The White House has also added Mr. Sams to focus full-time on oversight matters. In the 2020 election cycle, he was a campaign spokesman for Kamala Harris, who was then a Democratic presidential candidate and is now the vice president. Mr. Sams went on to work for the Department of Health and Human Services on pandemic-related issues.
As part of the planning sessions with the White House, Mr. Bauer has also raised the possibility of hiring outside firms with special expertise to assist him, according to people briefed on the talks.
Mr. Bauer, who now teaches at New York University School of Law, was a top lawyer to Senate Democrats during the 1999 impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. In 2011, he was the White House counsel to President Barack Obama when Republicans took over the House and began investigating matters like the botched “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking case.
Trump-supporting Republicans have been stoking expectations that they will turn the tables next year, particularly given the level of scrutiny that House Democrats have cast on Mr. Trump and his administration: two years of congressional investigations culminating in the two impeachments, followed by the Jan. 6 committee’s inquiry into the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results.
Representative James R. Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the Oversight Committee, has also pledged to investigate Hunter Biden’s dealings and a cache of files that are said to have come from a laptop Mr. Biden abandoned in a repair shop. (People familiar with the matter have authenticated some emails that came from its hard drive to The New York Times, but numerous files attributed to it are circulating, and it is not clear whether all are legitimate.)
Mr. Comer said on Monday that he believed promising an inquiry into Mr. Biden’s son would bolster Republican turnout in the midterms. Voters have “suspected for a long time that Hunter Biden was a shady business guy,” he said, suggesting without evidence that both men had been “compromised” by Russian oligarchs.
The Justice Department has been examining whether Hunter Biden broke tax and foreign lobbying laws, a matter that is expected to be resolved in the coming months. Regardless of what Attorney General Merrick B. Garland decides, he is likely to face accusations from Republicans that he gave the president’s son preferential treatment.
Still, Republicans have been divided about whether it is smart to talk about impeachment already.
In April, Representative Greg Murphy, Republican of North Carolina, told Fox News that there were “plenty” of grounds to impeach Mr. Biden, citing the border crisis, Afghanistan and other ways he said the president had committed offenses “against the heart and soul of this country.” The dilemma, Mr. Murphy said, was that Ms. Harris, who would become president if Mr. Biden were removed, was worse.
A few days later, a Fox News host played that clip for Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, who is likely to become speaker if Republicans take the House, and asked whether he would move to impeach Mr. Biden. Mr. McCarthy, the minority leader, accused Democrats of using impeachment “for political reasons,” which he said Republicans would not do. Still, he vowed to hold the Biden administration accountable and follow the facts.
“We believe in the rule of law,” Mr. McCarthy said. “We’re not going to pick and choose just because somebody has power. We’re going to uphold the law. At any time, if someone breaks the law and the ramification becomes impeachment, we would move toward that. But we’re not going to use it for political purposes.”
But his comments drew immediate rebukes from a range of right-wing commentators and some lawmakers who had already endorsed impeachment resolutions. As the fallout from the Jan. 6 attack has shown — Mr. McCarthy at first said he would tell Mr. Trump to resign but then flipped to embracing him — he has a history of bending to his party’s winds.
Catie Edmondson contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/14/us/p ... 20Politics
Re: TrumpReich in action
Hunter Biden is a loose cannon and probably an idiot.Another tragedy for his father.
Re: TrumpReich in action
AxiosAM, May 15:
"I’ve heard casual talk of civil war inside places that purport to worship the Prince of Peace," The Atlantic's Tim Alberta writes in a tour de force that runs 15 pages in the magazine's June issue.
"And, far from feeling misplaced, these conversations draw legitimacy from a sense of divine justice. The Church is not a victim of America’s civic strife. Instead, it is one of the principal catalysts."
Alberta's dad was senior pastor of an evangelical church in Michigan.
"I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. It’s heartbreaking," he writes.
"Evangelicals — including my own father — became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ."
"To many evangelicals today," Alberta continues, "the enemy is no longer secular America, but their fellow Christians, people who hold the same faith but different beliefs":
How did this happen? For generations, white evangelicals have cultivated a narrative pitting courageous, God-fearing Christians against a wicked society that wants to expunge the Almighty from public life.
Having convinced so many evangelicals that the next election could trigger the nation’s demise, Christian leaders effectively turned thousands of churches into unwitting cells in a loosely organized, hazily defined, existentially urgent movement — the types of places where paranoia and falsehoods flourish and people turn on one another.
The bottom line: "Evangelical leaders set something in motion decades ago that pastors today can no longer control."
"I’ve heard casual talk of civil war inside places that purport to worship the Prince of Peace," The Atlantic's Tim Alberta writes in a tour de force that runs 15 pages in the magazine's June issue.
"And, far from feeling misplaced, these conversations draw legitimacy from a sense of divine justice. The Church is not a victim of America’s civic strife. Instead, it is one of the principal catalysts."
Alberta's dad was senior pastor of an evangelical church in Michigan.
"I’ve spent my life watching evangelicalism morph from a spiritual disposition into a political identity. It’s heartbreaking," he writes.
"Evangelicals — including my own father — became compulsively political, allowing specific ethical arguments to snowball into full-blown partisan advocacy, often in ways that distracted from their mission of evangelizing for Christ."
"To many evangelicals today," Alberta continues, "the enemy is no longer secular America, but their fellow Christians, people who hold the same faith but different beliefs":
How did this happen? For generations, white evangelicals have cultivated a narrative pitting courageous, God-fearing Christians against a wicked society that wants to expunge the Almighty from public life.
Having convinced so many evangelicals that the next election could trigger the nation’s demise, Christian leaders effectively turned thousands of churches into unwitting cells in a loosely organized, hazily defined, existentially urgent movement — the types of places where paranoia and falsehoods flourish and people turn on one another.
The bottom line: "Evangelical leaders set something in motion decades ago that pastors today can no longer control."
Re: TrumpReich in action
This is exactly why our founders kept religion out of government.
Chill in spine begone.
<no response >
Chill in spine begone.
<no response >
Re: TrumpReich in action
Yahoo News today re:Buffalo tragedy:
Sun, May 15, 2022, 9:14 AM
Before he went on a racist rampage in a Buffalo grocery store on Saturday killing 10 people, Payton Gendron is believed to have written a hate-filled screed promoting the conspiracy theory that white people are facing ethnic, cultural and racial displacement by immigrants — a.k.a., a “white genocide.” It is an extremist position promoted widely on the right, including by others who have carried out deadly attacks in places like El Paso and Pittsburgh.
Among the “deplorable” set — those on the alt-right for whom this “great replacement theory” has true cultural currency — Saturday’s mass shooting is drawing a mix of denial and deflection.
Nick Fuentes — the young white supremacist who also bemoans “white genocide,” leads the Groyper movement online, and organizes the annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) — took to his Telegram channel as news of the killings broke to immediately (and without evidence) insist it was a “false flag” attack.
Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers — a member of the Oath Keepers who has appeared at Fuentes’ AFPAC conference — made a similar claim, conspiratorially suggesting Gendron was a government agent. “Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo,” Rogers wrote in a Telegram post.
VDARE, the virulently anti-immigrant outfit designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, didn’t directly respond to the shooting, but posted an article to its Telegram account plainly intended as deflection, headlined: “Whites Responsible For Less Than 3% Of All Mass Shootings In 2022 So Far — But Black Attacks Skyrocket,” replete with a picture of Brooklyn subway shooting suspect Frank James.
Mike Cernovich, the onetime Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who has tweeted that “diversity is code for white genocide,” labored to paint Gendron as an ideological foe of the right, an environmentalist Nazi who fell under “demonic influence.”
Laura Loomer — the alt-right troll who is running for congress from Florida — began with distraction. She first tenuously tried to link the shooting to current abortion politics, writing on Telegram, “Planned Parenthood has still targeted and killed more black people than the Buffalo supermarket shooter. Facts matter.”
(Rach3: If you vote GOP, you enable this.)
Sun, May 15, 2022, 9:14 AM
Before he went on a racist rampage in a Buffalo grocery store on Saturday killing 10 people, Payton Gendron is believed to have written a hate-filled screed promoting the conspiracy theory that white people are facing ethnic, cultural and racial displacement by immigrants — a.k.a., a “white genocide.” It is an extremist position promoted widely on the right, including by others who have carried out deadly attacks in places like El Paso and Pittsburgh.
Among the “deplorable” set — those on the alt-right for whom this “great replacement theory” has true cultural currency — Saturday’s mass shooting is drawing a mix of denial and deflection.
Nick Fuentes — the young white supremacist who also bemoans “white genocide,” leads the Groyper movement online, and organizes the annual America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC) — took to his Telegram channel as news of the killings broke to immediately (and without evidence) insist it was a “false flag” attack.
Arizona state senator Wendy Rogers — a member of the Oath Keepers who has appeared at Fuentes’ AFPAC conference — made a similar claim, conspiratorially suggesting Gendron was a government agent. “Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo,” Rogers wrote in a Telegram post.
VDARE, the virulently anti-immigrant outfit designated as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, didn’t directly respond to the shooting, but posted an article to its Telegram account plainly intended as deflection, headlined: “Whites Responsible For Less Than 3% Of All Mass Shootings In 2022 So Far — But Black Attacks Skyrocket,” replete with a picture of Brooklyn subway shooting suspect Frank James.
Mike Cernovich, the onetime Pizzagate conspiracy theorist who has tweeted that “diversity is code for white genocide,” labored to paint Gendron as an ideological foe of the right, an environmentalist Nazi who fell under “demonic influence.”
Laura Loomer — the alt-right troll who is running for congress from Florida — began with distraction. She first tenuously tried to link the shooting to current abortion politics, writing on Telegram, “Planned Parenthood has still targeted and killed more black people than the Buffalo supermarket shooter. Facts matter.”
(Rach3: If you vote GOP, you enable this.)
Re: TrumpReich in action
Part of a NYT story today:
At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times.
The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Times’s analysis exposes how deeply rooted lies and misinformation about former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat have become in state legislatures, which play an integral role in U.S. democracy. In some, the false view that the election was stolen — either by fraud or as a result of pandemic-related changes to the process — is now widely accepted as fact among Republican lawmakers, turning statehouses into hotbeds of conspiratorial thinking and specious legal theories.
Election and democracy experts say they see the rise of anti-democratic impulses in statehouses as a clear, new threat to the health of American democracy. State legislatures hold a unique position in the country’s democratic apparatus, wielding a constitutionally mandated power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” Cheered on by Mr. Trump as he eyes another run for the White House in 2024, many state legislators have shown they see that power as license to exert greater control over the outcome of elections.
This story is part of an ongoing examination by The Times of challenges to democratic norms in the United States and around the world.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Trump acknowledged that in deciding whom to endorse in state legislative races, he is looking for candidates who want state legislatures to have a say in naming presidential electors — a position that could let politicians short-circuit the democratic process and override the popular vote.
“In 2020, the plan of Trump and his allies hinged ultimately on getting state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters,” said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group. “If past is prologue, that same strategy is likely to be central to efforts to subvert an election in the future.”
What state legislatures can attempt before an election
Pass laws that make voting harder
Pass laws that give them more power over elections
Pass laws that make overturning elections easier
What they can attempt after an election
Launch audits and investigations
Attempt to delay certification
Vote to send alternate electors
What they can attempt after an election has been certified
Launch audits and investigations
Attempt to decertify the election
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... 693bc7595b
At least 357 sitting Republican legislators in closely contested battleground states have used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, according to a review of legislative votes, records and official statements by The New York Times.
The tally accounts for 44 percent of the Republican legislators in the nine states where the presidential race was most narrowly decided. In each of those states, the election was conducted without any evidence of widespread fraud, leaving election officials from both parties in agreement on the victory of Joseph R. Biden Jr.
The Times’s analysis exposes how deeply rooted lies and misinformation about former President Donald J. Trump’s defeat have become in state legislatures, which play an integral role in U.S. democracy. In some, the false view that the election was stolen — either by fraud or as a result of pandemic-related changes to the process — is now widely accepted as fact among Republican lawmakers, turning statehouses into hotbeds of conspiratorial thinking and specious legal theories.
Election and democracy experts say they see the rise of anti-democratic impulses in statehouses as a clear, new threat to the health of American democracy. State legislatures hold a unique position in the country’s democratic apparatus, wielding a constitutionally mandated power to set the “times, places and manner of holding elections.” Cheered on by Mr. Trump as he eyes another run for the White House in 2024, many state legislators have shown they see that power as license to exert greater control over the outcome of elections.
This story is part of an ongoing examination by The Times of challenges to democratic norms in the United States and around the world.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. Trump acknowledged that in deciding whom to endorse in state legislative races, he is looking for candidates who want state legislatures to have a say in naming presidential electors — a position that could let politicians short-circuit the democratic process and override the popular vote.
“In 2020, the plan of Trump and his allies hinged ultimately on getting state legislatures to overturn the will of the voters,” said Ben Berwick, a counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group. “If past is prologue, that same strategy is likely to be central to efforts to subvert an election in the future.”
What state legislatures can attempt before an election
Pass laws that make voting harder
Pass laws that give them more power over elections
Pass laws that make overturning elections easier
What they can attempt after an election
Launch audits and investigations
Attempt to delay certification
Vote to send alternate electors
What they can attempt after an election has been certified
Launch audits and investigations
Attempt to decertify the election
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... 693bc7595b
Re: TrumpReich in action
The " real cause " of shootings in schools is the "crazy teachers" per Don,Jr.
HuffPost
Don Trump Jr. Suggests Uvalde Shooter Could Have Killed 19 Kids With A 'Bat'
Mary Papenfuss
Sat, May 28, 2022, 11:19 PM
In an incredible display of utter tastelessness, Donald Trump Jr. insisted in a rage-fueled video on social media Saturday that the Uvalde mass shooter could have killed 19 children and two teachers with a “bat.”
Assault rifles are being stigmatized when “screwed up people” are the real issue, he railed in a Facebook video.
The red-faced, nearly teary-eyed Trump Jr. shouted that the shooter was a “sociopath” who could wreak the same havoc with nearly any other weapon.
“It’s the gun; it’s not the sociopath wielding it,” people are claiming, he complained. “He wouldn’t have done the exact same thing with a bat, or a bomb, or some sort of improvised device — or a machete?” he added.
The real problem is that people are “screwed up,” and we have “crazy teachers” and “indoctrination programs” in our schools, he insisted.
“That’s what’s going on right now, guys. Enough is enough,” said Trump, who said he’s looking for “accountability.” “Never ends, man,” he added.
In fact the gun is critical in the amount of destruction any shooter can deliver. Assault rifles cause extreme trauma to the human body, and bullets are spit out lightning fast, allowing a gunman to do maximum damage extremely quickly.
A pediatric trauma surgeon at the University Hospital in San Antonio who helped save the lives of children wounded at the Uvalde elementary school told CNN earlier this week that the high velocity bullets rip out “large areas” of tissue that instantly trigger massive hemorrhaging that can kill someone within five minutes. That’s why mass shootings with assault rifles have so few survivors (unlike, say, an attack involving a bat).
“When a high-velocity firearm enters a body, it basically creates a wave and a blast,” Dr. Lillian Liao told “Nightline. “So it looks like a body part got blown up. A high-velocity firearm will create a giant hole in the body.”
All the treated survivors suffered “large destructive wounds,” which are more likely to affect an organ in the small body of a child, she said.
When Scottish parents and gun control advocates were battling to ban high-caliber handguns after 16 children were killed in a 1996 mass shooting in a school in Dunblane, the late Prince Phillip asked if someone beat people to death with a cricket bat, would they be banned as well?
Obviously, that was “nonsense,” Mick North, a father of 5-year-old Sophie killed in Dunblane, told NPR Friday, recalling the prince’s complaint.
Such statements utterly fail to acknowledge the appalling devastation of guns, particularly automatic weapons, North noted. “It is too easy for somebody to pick up something like a gun and cause havoc within seconds and certainly within minutes,” he said.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
HuffPost
Don Trump Jr. Suggests Uvalde Shooter Could Have Killed 19 Kids With A 'Bat'
Mary Papenfuss
Sat, May 28, 2022, 11:19 PM
In an incredible display of utter tastelessness, Donald Trump Jr. insisted in a rage-fueled video on social media Saturday that the Uvalde mass shooter could have killed 19 children and two teachers with a “bat.”
Assault rifles are being stigmatized when “screwed up people” are the real issue, he railed in a Facebook video.
The red-faced, nearly teary-eyed Trump Jr. shouted that the shooter was a “sociopath” who could wreak the same havoc with nearly any other weapon.
“It’s the gun; it’s not the sociopath wielding it,” people are claiming, he complained. “He wouldn’t have done the exact same thing with a bat, or a bomb, or some sort of improvised device — or a machete?” he added.
The real problem is that people are “screwed up,” and we have “crazy teachers” and “indoctrination programs” in our schools, he insisted.
“That’s what’s going on right now, guys. Enough is enough,” said Trump, who said he’s looking for “accountability.” “Never ends, man,” he added.
In fact the gun is critical in the amount of destruction any shooter can deliver. Assault rifles cause extreme trauma to the human body, and bullets are spit out lightning fast, allowing a gunman to do maximum damage extremely quickly.
A pediatric trauma surgeon at the University Hospital in San Antonio who helped save the lives of children wounded at the Uvalde elementary school told CNN earlier this week that the high velocity bullets rip out “large areas” of tissue that instantly trigger massive hemorrhaging that can kill someone within five minutes. That’s why mass shootings with assault rifles have so few survivors (unlike, say, an attack involving a bat).
“When a high-velocity firearm enters a body, it basically creates a wave and a blast,” Dr. Lillian Liao told “Nightline. “So it looks like a body part got blown up. A high-velocity firearm will create a giant hole in the body.”
All the treated survivors suffered “large destructive wounds,” which are more likely to affect an organ in the small body of a child, she said.
When Scottish parents and gun control advocates were battling to ban high-caliber handguns after 16 children were killed in a 1996 mass shooting in a school in Dunblane, the late Prince Phillip asked if someone beat people to death with a cricket bat, would they be banned as well?
Obviously, that was “nonsense,” Mick North, a father of 5-year-old Sophie killed in Dunblane, told NPR Friday, recalling the prince’s complaint.
Such statements utterly fail to acknowledge the appalling devastation of guns, particularly automatic weapons, North noted. “It is too easy for somebody to pick up something like a gun and cause havoc within seconds and certainly within minutes,” he said.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
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