Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Fulton County grand jury that indicted Donald Trump have all just become targets for right wing stochastic terrorist violence.

The purported names and addresses of members of the grand jury that indicted Donald Trump and 18 of his co-defendants on state racketeering charges this week have been posted on a fringe website that often features violent rhetoric, NBC News has learned.

NBC News is choosing not to name the website featuring the addresses to avoid further spreading the information.

The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis faced racist threats ahead of the return of the indictment and additional security measures were put in place, with some employees being allowed to work from home.

The grand juror's purported addresses were spotted by Advance Democracy, Inc., a non-partisan research group founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists," Jones said. "The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats — which serve to inspire real-world political violence— is shameful.”

Advance Democracy also noted that users were posting on other social media sites the names and images of people believed to have been grand jurors. The posts asserted that the jurors had posted on social media in support of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., former President Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Yesterday — after Trump posted on his social media website that authorities were going "after those that fought to find the RIGGERS!" — Advance Democracy noted that Trump supporters were "using the term ‘rigger’ in lieu of a racial slur" in posts online.

The Fulton County Sheriff's Office, which is handling the surrender of Trump and his co-defendants over the course of the next 10 days, declined to comment.

Three of the grand jurors gave an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution yesterday with their names withheld for precisely this reason, and now all of them are in danger. Worse, if this heinous doxxing attempt is identifying the wrong people, then we're looking at putting lives in danger that have nothing to do with the indictment.

I suppose if these assholes do hurt jurors in a blatant effort to force the case to be dismissed, well, tens of millions of Trump voters will cheer that on too.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

As expected, the 5th Circuit has sided with US Judge Andrew Kacsmaryk in banning the abortion drug mifepristone from being prescribed or sent by mail, although the SCOTUS hold on that order remains during the appeals process.

 

Access to the abortion pill mifepristone must be restricted, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday, ordering a ban on telemedicine prescriptions and shipments of the drug by mail, though the order will not immediately take effect.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of ruling that the drug must be pulled off the market altogether, as a lower court had done.

Mifepristone's availability remains unchanged for now, following an emergency order from the U.S. Supreme Court in April preserving the status quo during the appeal.


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the pill, and lawyers for the anti-abortion groups challenging the drug's approval did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The three-judge 5th Circuit panel was reviewing an order in April by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas. While it was a preliminary ruling that applied while the case was pending, Kacsmaryk said he was ultimately likely to make it permanent.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by four anti-abortion groups headed by the recently formed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors who sued in November.

They contend the FDA used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug's safety when used by minors.

All three judges on the panel are staunchly conservative, with a history of opposing abortion rights. One of them, Circuit Judge William Ho, said he would have gone further and pulled mifepristone off the market altogether.

Instead, the majority of the panel rolled back FDA actions that had made the drug easier to access in recent years. Those included allowing distribution by mail, approving its use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven weeks, reducing the dosage and cutting the number of required in-person doctor visits from three to one.

The decision will almost certainly be appealed first to the full 5th Circuit and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last year overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.

 

We'll see if the appeals make it to SCOTUS in time for June's traditional Removal of the Rights in 2024.

 

And once again, we had one of the three judges on the panel completely agreed with Judge Kacsmaryk that mifeprestone should be removed from the market entirely, which is still lunatic nonsense.

 

I have a notion that SCOTUS doesn't want to deal with this in an election year, ridding the entire country of a safe, effective medical abortion medication for tens of millions of women four months before a presidential election will be catastrophic for the GOP, and everyone knows it.

Cop Out, Or, That's The Sound Of The Police (Leaving)

The small town of Goodhue, Minnesota is cop-free this week as the entire department resigned over pay issues.

 

A small city in southeast Minnesota is without a police force after its chief and officers resigned over low pay.

Goodhue — population 1,250, according to the 2020 census — accepted the resignation of its police chief, only full-time officer, and five part-time officers at a Monday city council meeting that was originally intended to discuss pay raises.

Mayor Ellen Anderson Buck said the Goodhue County Sheriff’s Office will patrol the city when the officers’ contracts expire later this month.

“We need to pursue other options. So at this point, there is no reason to really talk about pay increases since we no longer have a police force,” she said at the meeting Monday evening. “We will have police coverage in the City of Goodhue. That is not an issue.”

The county sheriff will also take over active criminal cases, she said.

The council was adamant on its intent to eventually re-form the department, which Anderson Buck called the “ultimate goal,” though she acknowledged the difficulty of hiring new officers. There are about 200 open police jobs in Minnesota, she said.

“We’re not the first, and we won’t be the last,” she said. “This is not unusual, it does happen.”

 

Cop-free, yes. County Mountie-free, no.  Still, if the county can handle it, why not use the money for the now defunct town PD for, say, a real service to the people of Goodhue like library books, school renovation,  or, you know, anything not police-related.

Just an idea.