Sunday Long Read: Lamb Of A Cruel God

Our Sunday Long Read is Politico Magazine's Jessica Pishko profile of a white supremacist domestic terrorist, Pinal County, Arizona Sheriff Mark Lamb. Know your enemy, folks.

The first thing to know about Mark Lamb, the sheriff of Pinal County, Arizona, is that he just plain looks like a sheriff. It could be the Justin cowboy hat he wears pulled low over his eyes and his penchant for Western shirts and a tactical vest in lieu of a uniform. It could be his demeanor, at once confident and aw-shucks. It could be his size — he’s 6’3”, 240 pounds, or so he writes in his self-published book, American Sheriff: Traditional Values in a Modern World.

In public, Lamb commands attention. During a July interview at a local café here decked out in Old West paraphernalia, passersby interrupted to clasp hands heartily with him and chat. There was an older Latino man named Randy wearing a snap-pocket shirt who had recently retired from a wild horse-and-burro program at the nearby prison and asked Lamb if he knew any cowboys. There were middle-aged women with salon-styled hair hoping to take their picture with him. There was the waitress who told Lamb he needed to gain weight. They seemed unsurprised to see their sheriff talking to a reporter and flashing his TV-ready smile.

Lamb, 49, has jurisdiction over only Arizona’s third most populous county, a stretch of desert wedged between Phoenix and Tucson that’s home to about 500,000 people. Yet he styles himself as the “American Sheriff” — a moniker around which he has spent the past several years trying to build a national brand as a fervent defender of law enforcement.

Since taking office in 2017, Lamb has become the face of a new online streaming service called the American Sheriff Network and of a nonprofit coalition of sheriffs called Protect America Now; he also founded a charity, the American Sheriff Foundation. Lamb is a frequent talking head on Fox News and Newsmax, where he derides President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ handling of immigration, and he has spoken at political events like a Turning Point Action summit a few months ago in Phoenix, where he quoted Shakespeare and Thomas Paine (“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered”) and promised, “The sheriffs are going to hold the line.”

With an action figure-style charisma and a growing media platform, Lamb sees it as his mission to educate the American public about the role of the sheriff, which he described to me as to protect people from “the bad guys, and I always say the sheriff is also there to protect the people from government overreach.” As much as he glorifies law enforcement, though, Lamb is selective about which laws he chooses to enforce. He takes a hardline approach on immigration, for example, but when it comes to the government telling people to get vaccinated — or declaring the 2020 election legitimate — he fashions himself as more of a vigilante resister, with a heavy dose of anti-government, sometimes militant rhetoric.

Lamb supported the “stop the steal” campaign in Arizona and has expressed sympathy for the Jan. 6 rioters. He has called vaccine mandates “garbage” and spoke at a recent anti-vaccine rally in Phoenix, where he told supporters, “We’re going to find out what kind of patriots you are. We’re going to find out who is willing to die for freedom.” He also makes direct appeals to citizens, an effort that looks more dangerous after former President Donald Trump riled up supporters on Jan. 6. For example, Lamb, an ardent defender of the Second Amendment, has spoken in support of the formation of private militias — “well within the Constitution,” he told a group of supporters in March — and emphasized the power of sheriffs in Arizona, an open-carry state, to call local civilians into service to “suppress all affrays, insurrections and riots that comes to the attention of the sheriff.” Last year, as Black Lives Matter protests swept across the country, he formed a local civilian “posse” to assist his office with law enforcement, even though there were no such protests in Pinal County.

Through Protect America Now, which was founded by a Republican strategist and two businesspeople working with Lamb and counterparts nationwide, he is marshalling dozens of other elected sheriffs and citizen supporters around these ideas — “building an army” as the group puts it. The message: Sheriffs are here to protect your freedom — including freedom from your own democratically elected government.

 

What the law in Pinal County means is whatever Mark Lamb says it means. What he wants is a national network of like-minded county sheriffs, complete with surplus military gear thanks to Dubya and Trump and an army of deputies to use it against whomever they choose.

 

That's not law or justice.  That's an authoritarian regime. And there's dozens like Lamb out there, waiting to join his organized insurrectionists. What do you do when the local county sheriff *is* the terrorist in your neighborhood?

America as a united nation of 50 states doesn't have too much longer at this rate.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

The evidence of the Trump regime's "soft coup" attempt to seize control of the United States after losing to Joe Biden in November continues to pile up, this time with the story of Trump's advisers in a "war room" at the Willard Hotel in DC trying to engineer a way Trump could stay in power past January 20th.

They called it the “command center,” a set of rooms and suites in the posh Willard hotel a block from the White House where some of President Donald Trump’s most loyal lieutenants were working day and night with one goal in mind: overturning the results of the 2020 election.

The Jan. 6 rally on the Ellipse and the ensuing attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob would draw the world’s attention to the quest to physically block Congress from affirming Joe Biden’s victory. But the activities at the Willard that week add to an emerging picture of a less visible effort, mapped out in memos by a conservative pro-Trump legal scholar and pursued by a team of presidential advisers and lawyers seeking to pull off what they claim was a legal strategy to reinstate Trump for a second term.

They were led by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. Former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon was an occasional presence as the effort’s senior political adviser. Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik was there as an investigator. Also present was John Eastman, the scholar, who outlined scenarios for denying Biden the presidency in an Oval Office meeting on Jan. 4 with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.

They sought to make the case to Pence and ramp up pressure on him to take actions on Jan. 6 that Eastman suggested were within his powers, three people familiar with the operation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Their activities included finding and publicizing alleged evidence of fraud, urging members of state legislatures to challenge Biden’s victory and calling on the Trump-supporting public to press Republican officials in key states.

The effort underscores the extent to which Trump and a handful of true believers were working until the last possible moment to subvert the will of the voters, seeking to pressure Pence to delay or even block certification of the election, leveraging any possible constitutional loophole to test the boundaries of American democracy.

“I firmly believed then, as I believe now, that the vice president — as president of the Senate — had the constitutional power to send the issue back to the states for 10 days to investigate the widespread fraud and report back well in advance of Inauguration Day, January 20th,” one of those present, senior campaign aide and former White House special assistant Boris Epshteyn, told The Washington Post. “Our efforts were focused on conveying that message.”

In seeking to compel testimony from Bannon, the congressional panel investigating Jan. 6 this week cited his reported presence at the “ ‘war room’ organized at the Willard.” The House voted Thursday to hold Bannon in contempt of Congress after he refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena.

The committee has also requested documents and communications related to Eastman’s legal advice and analysis.

Eastman told The Post on Wednesday that he has not yet been contacted by the House select committee investigating the insurrection. Asked about his involvement in the Trump team’s operation at the Willard, Eastman said: “To the extent I was there, those were attorney discussions. You don’t get any comment from me on those.”

 

And at the heart of these machinations were Trump's gallery of evil minions: Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, along with Trump's legal architect, John Eastman. This represents an organized insurrection, to grab the reins of power while the January 6th terrorist attack was happening, and never give them back.

It only failed because VP Mike Pence got cold feet.

The plan was there. The execution of it failed. If people don't end up in prison for this, the next time the execution won't matter.

As Neera As I Can Tell, She Won

 Neera "But Her Mean Tweets!" Tanden gets the last laugh after all.

 

Neera Tanden, the former president of the Center for American Progress whose nomination as White House budget director was pulled earlier this year, has been named President Joe Biden’s staff secretary, a White House official confirmed Friday.

Tanden has been working in the White House since May as a senior adviser to the president. Her added responsibility as the staff secretary is to control the flow of documents to Biden and other senior staff.

"The Staff Secretary role is the central nervous system of the White House and moves the decision-making process and manages a wide variety of issues for the President," a White House official said in a statement. The role, a senior position, was once held by now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and John Podesta, who later served as then-President Bill Clinton's chief of staff.

Tanden will replace White House staff secretary, Jessica Hertz, who recently planned to leave the position, Politico reported.

As a senior adviser to Biden, Tanden had been tasked with preparing for different contingencies that could result from the Supreme Court’s consideration of Republican lawsuits seeking to strike down the Affordable Care Act, NBC News reported in May. She was also assigned to launch a review of the United States Digital Service whose mission is to make government accessible through technology.

A White House official said Friday that Tanden has also been working on the president's Build Back Better agenda. The official said that she will keep her senior adviser title "and will continue to provide leadership on particular projects and initiatives, and will report to the chief of staff."

The White House withdrew her nomination to lead the Office of Management and Budget in early March after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., voiced opposition to confirming her. Manchin and many pointed to what they described as inflammatory statements she had previously made publicly.

 

It was Joe Manchin who killed Tanden's nomination to OMB. She's now arguably the number 2 person on the WH staff behind Chief of Staff Ron Klain, especially with her keeping the senior advisor portfolio.

Manchin may wish Tanden was relegated to OMB instead, just sayin'.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Rudy Giuliani associate and Russian fixer Lev Parnas has been found guilty of campaign finance violations for funneling Putin mobster cash to Republicans.

Lev Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, were at Dulles International Airport near Washington two years ago, holding one-way tickets for a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, when the F.B.I. caught up with them.

The two Soviet-born businessmen, who had climbed to prominent places in the orbit of President Donald J. Trump, were arrested before boarding the flight and charged with several campaign finance violations, including conspiring to funnel a Russian tycoon’s money into American politics.

In the years that followed, Mr. Parnas began to open up about his role in events connected to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment. He provided material to House investigators and acknowledged participating in an effort by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to pressure Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe Biden, a leading Democratic presidential candidate at the time who subsequently beat Mr. Trump.

Still, the campaign finance charges loomed. Even as Mr. Fruman and a second man charged in the case, David Correia, pleaded guilty, Mr. Parnas and a fourth defendant, Andrey Kukushkin, maintained their innocence. Last week, the two men went to trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

On Friday, Mr. Parnas’s activity as a political donor caught up with him, as a jury convicted him on all six counts he was facing. Mr. Kukushkin was also found guilty.

In a statement, Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said that Mr. Parnas and Mr. Kukushkin had conspired to manipulate the American political system to enrich themselves.

”Campaign finance laws are designed to protect the integrity of our free and fair elections — unencumbered by foreign interests or influence,” Mr. Williams said. “Safeguarding those laws is essential to preserving the freedoms that Americans hold sacred.”

Speaking outside court after the verdict was read, Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, said his client planned to appeal and seek to have the conviction vacated.

Mr. Parnas, who is not in custody, was defiant.

“I’ve never hid from nobody,” he said, while thanking his supporters. “I’ve always stood up and told the truth.”

The verdict came after about six hours of deliberations, following testimony from, among others, a onetime finance director of a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump; an ex-chief of staff to a former Republican congressman from Texas; and the 2018 Republican candidate for governor of Nevada.

Prosecutors outlined a two-part scheme, saying Mr. Parnas had lied to the Federal Election Commission about certain campaign donations he had made and that he and Mr. Kukushkin had tried to gain favor among candidates with contributions tied to the Russian tycoon, Andrey Muraviev, with whom they were involved in a cannabis business.

“The purpose behind this conspiracy was influence buying,” a prosecutor, Hagan Cordell Scotten, said during closing arguments on Thursday, adding: “The voters would never know whose money was pouring into our elections.”

 

Arguably the biggest recipient of Parnas's generosity is former Nevada Republican gubernatorial candidate and current US senate candidate Adam Laxalt, who testified in the Parnas trial last month.

Keep in mind that Parnas's targets weren't federal officeholders, but state Republicans like Laxalt (running for Governor) and current Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. What Parnas wanted was in on the ground floor of state-level legalized marijuana in Republican states, and Giuliani was his ticket in.

 

Don't get it twisted though. Parnas gave nearly a third of a million to a Trump PAC illegally.

When Parnas used his influence in Ukraine to help Giuliani and Trump go after Hunter Biden, he thought he was on Easy Street. Of course, you trust DOnald Trump, this is what happens.

You face prison.

Stacking The Deck

It's redistricting time ahead of the 2022 elections, and no state is more obscenly broken in this respect than Wisconsin, where Democrats actually won 200,000 more state legislature votes last year, and Republicans run the state assembly with a 60-38 margin anyway. The 2022 GOP redistricting plan will actually make that even worse.

Republicans who control the Legislature would maintain a large advantage in Assembly races under a redistricting plan they made public late Wednesday.

The release of their proposed congressional and legislative maps propelled the state's redistricting fight into the next stage.

States must draw new maps every 10 years using census data to ensure districts have equal populations. Where the lines go can give one political party a big advantage over the other for a decade.

Republican lawmakers plan to approve their plans as soon as next month, but Democratic Gov. Tony Evers is likely to veto them. That would leave it to the courts to decide how to draw the districts.

Under the plans Republicans released Wednesday, 61 of the Assembly's 99 districts would lean Republican, according to recent voting patterns analyzed by Dave's Redistricting, an online platform that allows the public to review maps.

A small number would have only a slight GOP lean, meaning Democrats would have a shot at winning a few of those 61. But the vast majority of GOP seats would be quite safe for their party. (Republicans would also have a shot at winning a handful of the 38 Democratic-leaning seats.)

Because of the number of GOP-advantaged seats, Republicans would likely continue to hold sizable majorities in the Assembly for years.

 

That 61-38 margin would be the new baseline in a 50-50 election year, and fewer than ten state House districts would be competitive at all, meaning that Democrats would have no chance of regaining control for another decade, and then Republicans would just redraw another 55+ safe districts again in 2031.

It gets even worse when it comes to the state's eight Congressional delegation seats in the US House.

Six of the state's eight congressional districts would have a Republican advantage — four by double digits and two by single digits, according to Dave's Redistricting. The state's remaining two districts — one centered around Milwaukee, the other around Madison — would be overwhelmingly Democratic.

 

Republicans would actually gain a US House seat. In fact, redistricting in the nation as a whole would give Republicans about 15-20 more US House seats across the country, net. 

Which is the point. After this year, with this GOP, state control of most of the country's state legislatures will be impossible to flip for Democrats.

 

Permanent one-party state control.

 

Coming to a state near you...

Ohio Republicans New Trans-Ender Policy

Ohio Republicans have decided that of all the problems facing the Buckeye State right now, the one that needs immediate attention is quite literally making trans kids illegal under state law.

 

A new bill would prohibit children under age 18 from obtaining hormones treatments, puberty blockers and surgery to transition genders, even with parental consent.

House Bill 454, called the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act, is sponsored by a quarter of the Ohio House. All are Republicans. There are two sponsors — Reps. Gary Click of Sandusky County and Diane Grendell of Geauga County. Twenty-three Republicans are cosponsoring the bill.

The bill seeks to prevent gender-affirming health of youth under 18 through a handful of actions: Through restrictions on private insurance plans and Ohio Medicaid, potential sanctions on the licenses of medical professionals, potential cuts to public funding of hospitals and clinics, limits to what a school official can keep from parents when a child shares their gender identity in private.

The bill is similar to Arkansas’ SAFE Act, which Gov. Asa Hutchinson vetoed on April 5. A day later, the legislature overrode the veto. By July 21, a federal judge stopped the bill from going into effect as a lawsuit over its constitutionality wends its way through the courts.

Aaron Baer, president of the Center for Christian Virtue, a Christian conservative policy organization formerly known as Citizens for Community Values, said that his group is championing the bill in Ohio and helped draft HB 454. It contains the same provisions as the Arkansas bill, which the Family Research Council and the Alliance Defending Freedom helped author.

“We’ve been talking about this issue for a very long time,” he said.

Maria Bruno, Equality Ohio’s public policy director, said it’s appalling to see Ohio children being used as political pawns by lawmakers seeking re-election.

“This bill attempts to ban evidence-based medical treatment that is supported by medical professionals, including but not limited to the American Academy of Pediatricians, the Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the American Psychiatric Association,” she said.

 

The party of "you'll never take OUR FREEDOMS" and "GOVERNMENT STAY OUT" again has no problem turning the entirety of society into a mechanism of state-enforced monitoring of kids to prevent them being trans, requiring the punishing adults for helping them, and destroying their support networks with no recourse or remorse.

Even the bill's name, Save Adolescents From Experimentation, relegates being trans to "a dangerous phase we have to save kids from" rather than "We should help these kids navigate some really tough choices here and let them know they are loved."

No, it's YOU ARE ILLEGAL and IF YOU DO THIS ADULTS WHO CARE WILL BE PUNISHED, to kids.

To kids.

 

Republicans are horrific monsters. And it doesn't matter what DeWine thinks because his veto will be overridden if this many Republicans are co-sponsors.

StupidiNews!

• President Joe Biden said at a televised CNN town hall meeting on Thursday in Baltimore that he is considering using the National Guard's logistics capability to ease America's supply chain issues.
• US Attorney General Merrick Garland faced grilling from both Republicans and Democrats on the House Judiciary committee Thursday over federal prosecution of January 6th insurrectionists.
• Thailand announced vaccinated visitors from 46 countries skip mandatory COVID quarantine starting in November, including vaccinated visitors from Canada, China, Britain, and the US.
• Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren continues to call for the replacement of Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Jerome Powell over ethics issues with Fed officials engaging in stock trades.
• University of Maryland researchers can cheaply make wood materials more than 20 times the hardness of existing wood, meaning the material could replace some disposable plastic items.
  

Last Call For Matt's #MeToo Moment, Con't

Apparently GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz isn't just facing major sexual misconduct charges, his "wingman" Joel Greenberg, a former county tax collector from Gaetz's home of Florida, has spilled so much information on Gaetz that federal prosecutors are still cataloguing it all.

 

Joel Greenberg, the former Florida official whose crimes in the state ensnared Rep. Matt Gaetz in a federal sex trafficking investigation, has been providing the Justice Department with new information as he continues to cooperate with authorities following a guilty plea earlier this year. 

At a brief hearing in Orlando federal court Monday, Roger Handberg, an assistant US attorney, said that Greenberg has made allegations to investigators that "take us to some places we did not anticipate." 

"What investigators do is they follow up on that to try to corroborate the information that's been provided," Handberg said. 

Greenberg, a former county tax commissioner and close friend of Gaetz's, pleaded guilty to six charges in May, admitting that he had knowingly solicited and paid a minor for sex. 

As part of his plea agreement, he was required to give "substantial assistance" to investigators as they build out related cases. His lawyer has said that Greenberg has held a series of proffers, or meetings, with the Justice Department. 

Handberg did not say what investigations Greenberg was providing new information to authorities about, although CNN has reported that Greenberg has told the Justice Department about encounters he and Gaetz had with women who were given cash or gifts in exchange for sex. 

Greenberg faced dozens of criminal charges before his guilty plea, and the ongoing investigations related to him have also roped in a circle of local politicians and businessmen who authorities are scrutinizing for possible fraud. 

In court Monday, Handberg called Greenberg a "prolific criminal." 

"Mr. Greenberg was not alone," Handberg said. 

Gaetz, who is also under investigation for obstruction of justice related to the investigation into him, has not been charged with a crime. He has repeatedly denied having sex with an underage woman. 

The hearing was held following a request by Greenberg's attorney to delay Greenberg's sentencing for a second time so that he could continue to provide information. The Justice Department had not opposed the request. 

Handberg called the need for a second delay "unusual" but added the department was in an "unusual situation given the number of different investigations and lines of investigation we are pursuing."

 

When federal prosecutors ask that they need to delay a trial because their chief states' evidence witness against you has so much additional credible information to give that they are pursuing additional lines of investigation, you are screwed beyond belief.

Greenberg has been feeding the feds stuff for almost a year now. There's so much of it, they're asking for more time to build their case because it's that big.

If this is a tactic to get Gaetz to turn over on a bigger fish, say, Trump...well, this is how you do it. This has now gone far beyond a #MeToo moment, not to minimize it, but Gaetz could be facing decades in prison if the feds are still racking up the charges.

 

And the feds? Well, they are working overtime for this one. 

The Justice Department has added two top prosecutors from Washington to the child sex trafficking investigation of Representative Matt Gaetz, according to two people briefed on the matter, a sign of the complex and high-stakes nature of the inquiry into Mr. Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is one of former President Donald J. Trump’s closest congressional allies.

The prosecutors — one a public corruption investigator with an expertise in child exploitation crimes, and the other a top leader of the public corruption unit — have been working on the Florida-based investigation for at least three months, the people said.

It is not unusual for prosecutors from the Justice Department in Washington to be added to local teams of federal investigators in high-profile cases that require a deep and specific expertise like sex crimes.

For his part, Gaetz is now publicly claiming that he's the target of a mysterious assassin.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) made an unexpected announcement during a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

"I think someone may be trying to kill me," Gaetz said shortly after he was recognized on the House floor. "If they are successful, I would like my constituents and my family to know who stopped their arrest."

Gaetz then claimed that he received a death threat from someone who claimed to be a professional hit man on Twitter and who supposedly traveled to Washington D.C.

According to Gaetz, the Capitol Police recommended that the individual be arrested, but the Department of Justice supposedly refused to take action.

 

Yes, Gaetz made this claim on the House floor on Wednesday. No evidence, no anything, and he claims if he "suddenly dies" that we all know what happened to him.

The real victim in the end is Matt Gaetz, right?

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

 In the end, the Republican platform is about allowing white supremacy to reign supreme, and for Black folk, especially Black Democrats, to be eliminated.

Iowa Democratic Party Chair Ross Wilburn received multiple threats, including one of lynching, after he penned an opinion piece critical of former President Donald Trump, he told the Des Moines Register.

Wilburn, a state representative from Ames, is the first Black chair of the Iowa Democratic Party.

Although he’s become accustomed to hateful comments as an elected official and party leader, “it's important for people to know that this is not normal and it’s not OK,” Wilburn said in an interview.

Ames Police Cmdr. Jason Tuttle confirmed his department is investigating the threats, and Story County Attorney Tim Meals said his office has also been made aware of the incidents.

Wilburn authored an opinion piece titled “Iowa Republicans put loyalty to Trump over helping Iowans,” which the Des Moines Register published on its website Oct. 8 and on its print opinion page Oct. 9. The piece was timed ahead of Trump’s rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines Oct. 9. It was the former president's first trip back to the state since he lost the election and a mob of his supporters swarmed the U.S. Capitol in January.

After the essay's publication, Wilburn said he received two threatening phone messages and one threatening email to his legislative email address, which all made reference to what he wrote in the article.

“The voicemails include very explicit language. Every other word was the ‘n-word,’” he said.

Wilburn said he could not share more details about the contents of the calls because the investigation is pending. But he said he was compelled to report these instances of harassment, though he has received others, because of the “intensity” of the language.

“What stood out this time was the language that was used — specifically, the very direct statement about lynching,” he said. “And I get angry about that — that people feel that they can come in and make you feel less than human, subhuman, with that type of reference to lynching. There's the history behind that and trying to intimidate Blacks, intimidate African Americans.”

Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann expressed support for Wilburn in a statement Tuesday.

"I strongly condemn the racist threats made toward Chairman Wilburn," he said. "We can have a spirited debate on issues and candidates without threats of violence. I am pleased the authorities are looking into this and hope those responsible are held accountable for their actions."

 

The Iowa GOP party chair strangly condemns this, he says.

 

But he'll do everything he can to support Trump.

 

And that means getting the votes of the people who want to see  Ross Wilburn swinging from an oak tree.

Let's not forget that part.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

I've been telling everyone that President Manchin holds 100% of the cards in the Build Back Better/Good Package negotiations because he's stacked the deck, and now we finally get to see the last and most powerful card in his hand if David Corn's story is to be believed, and Manchin actually calls it "Bullshit".

In recent days, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) has told associates that he is considering leaving the Democratic Party if President Joe Biden and Democrats on Capitol Hill do not agree to his demand to cut the size of the social infrastructure bill from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion, according to people who have heard Manchin discuss this. Manchin has said that if this were to happen, he would declare himself an “American Independent.” And he has devised a detailed exit strategy for his departure.

Manchin has been in the center of a wild rush of negotiations with his fellow Democrats and the White House over a possible compromise regarding Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better package, and Manchin’s opposition to key provisions—including Medicare and Medicaid expansion, an expanded child tax credit, and measures to address climate change—has been an obstacle that the Democrats have yet to overcome. As these talks have proceeded, Manchin has discussed bolting from the Democratic Party—perhaps to place pressure on Biden and Democrats in these negotiations.

He told associates that he has a two-step plan for exiting the party. First, he would send a letter to Sen. Chuck Schumer, the top Senate Democrat, removing himself from the Democratic leadership of the Senate. (He is vice chairman of the Senate Democrats’ policy and communications committee.) Manchin hopes that would send a signal. He would then wait and see if that move had any impact on the negotiations. After about a week, he said, he would change his voter registration from Democrat to independent.

It is unclear whether in this scenario Manchin would end up caucusing with the Democrats, which would allow them to continue to control the Senate, or side with the Republicans and place the Senate in GOP hands. In either event, he would hold great sway over this half of Congress.

Without Manchin’s vote, the Democrats cannot pass the package in the 50-50 Senate. And a vote on this measure is key to House passage of the $1 trillion bipartisan road-bridges-and-broadband infrastructure bill the Senate approved in August. (Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, has also been a problem for the party.) Manchin has met with Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a variety of his fellow Senate Democrats this week in an effort to strike a deal. Through it all, he has insisted that $1.75 trillion is his top and final offer, and he has constantly said no to proposed programs that almost every other congressional Democrat supports. He has told his fellow Democrats that if they don’t accept his position, they risk getting nothing.

Manchin told associates that he was prepared to initiate his exit plan earlier this week and had mentioned the possibility to Biden. But he was encouraged by the conversations with Sanders and top Democrats that occurred at the start of the week and did not yet see a reason to take this step. Still, he has informed associates that because he is so out of sync with the Democratic Party he believes it is likely he will leave the party by November 2022.

Manchin has repeatedly said that he has a significant philosophical difference with most of his fellow Democrats. He has told reporters that he believes major programs in the Build Back Better bill would move the United States toward an “entitlement mentality” and that he cannot accept that. In a recent meeting with Biden, Manchin told the president that he sees government as a partner with the public not the ultimate provider, according to people who heard the senator’s account of the conversation. He explained to the president that in his view Biden didn’t win the presidency last year by championing progressive proposals, and he pressed the president to recall his campaign promise to bring people together. He also reminded Biden that he has vowed not to support any package unless it contains the Hyde Amendment, which bans the use of federal funds to pay for abortions, except in cases of incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.

 

Now that if up there is a big one. David Corn isn't exactly the best person in the beltway Village. He's had #MeToo issues and credibility problems on the Steele Dossier in the past, and been publicly called out on both.

 

If Corn is right here, it means Democrats need to take President Manchin's deal, accept what he allows you to have, or get nothing and lose the Senate. Note that he's saying it's "likely" that he will leave the party by November 2022. Whether that means siding with the GOP and Biden losing everything, well, now that's up to Biden, isn't it, said the hostage taker.

Of course, Manchin doesn't want to be seen as the hostage taker so as I said up top he's denying all of this.

 

MANCHIN to @burgessev and me on the report he is threatening to leave the Democratic Party if his demands are not met on infrastructure: “I can’t control rumors and it’s bullshit, bullshit spelled with a B, U, L, L, capital ‘B’”: pic.twitter.com/ex8iHMIiSs

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) October 20, 2021

So we're right back to "Will he, won't he" because frankly, feeding David Corn this rumor would be a GOP operative's dream story sowing Democratic disarray.  What would Manchin gain from going down as the most hated Democratic senator since Joe Lieberman and John Edwards? 

The answer is a shitload of money, frankly.

Besides, it's not like Manchin cares too much about making deals or getting things passed as voting rights went down in flames again in the Senate on Wednesday.

Democrats argued that the bill is a necessity after Republican state legislatures passed laws limiting access to the ballot box following former President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

"Across the country, the Big Lie -- the Big Lie -- has spread like a cancer as many states across the nation have passed the most draconian restrictions against voting that we've seen in decades," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said. "If nothing is done, these laws will make it harder for millions of Americans to participate in their government." 

President Joe Biden issued a harsh statement during the vote, calling it "unconscionable" that Republicans would block the legislation from advancing. 

"The United States Senate needs to act to protect the sacred constitutional right to vote, which is under unrelenting assault by proponents of the Big Lie and Republican Governors, Secretaries of State, Attorneys-General, and state legislatures across the nation," Biden said. 

Amid the Republican blockade, Democrats on the left have increasingly called on their party's senators to gut the Senate's filibuster rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation. 

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman, a Senate Democratic candidate, said in a statement, "every Democratic Senator who votes in favor of this bill today, but won't support getting rid of the filibuster, is engaging in performative politics, and is content with the GOP's complete assault on our democracy." 

But at least two Democratic senators — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have said they are unwilling to change the filibuster rule and are crucial votes for the Biden administration's economic agenda. 

 

On the other hand, Corn does have a lot of clicks and views and follow-ups to gain if he's the bad faith actor here and he's being rolled by his sources.

On the gripping hand, well, Manchin himself has been conducting this entire trashing of the Biden plan in bad faith.

Of course if the story is true, the best part is after Manchin gets done playing this game, then it will be Vice-President Sinema's turn to whittle the bill down even more to see what she can get out of the deal as well. Something will pass I expect, but what that something is will be 100% up to the two of them.

The real question is which of these known bad faith actors then is acting in bad faith. I don't know the answer to that, but I do know the answer to the general Manchin/Sinema problem.

 

Remember, the answer here is more and better Dems, not staying home in 2022. That would render Manchin's antics irrelevant. Sinema too. 53, 54 Democrats in the Senate, and somehow keeping the House, and we're in far better shape.

But if history's any indication, we'll only get five or six more Republicans in the Senate and fifty or sixty more in the House instead.

StupidiNews!

• Nebraska Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry has stepped down from all his House committee assignments after being indicted on federal foreign donor campaign finance charges this week.
• Alexey Navalny, jailed Putin critic believed to have been poisoned on Putin's orders at least once, has received the top EU human rights award for 2021, the Sakharov Prize.
• India is celebrating the distribution of its one billionth COVID-19 vaccine dose as mass vaccination efforts across the country are being hailed as successful.
• A bus bombing in Damascus has killed 14, the government of Bashar Assad responding with artillery shelling of rebel-held areas killing ten.
• Lawmakers in Brazil are walking back genocide accusations against President Jair Bolsonaro over the government's disastrous COVID response, but he still faces recommendations of nine charges.
  

Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

Why yes, Trump immigration czar and avowed white supremacist asshole Stephen Miller wanted to militarize the border with Mexico using a quarter of a million troops and then send in special forces kill squads and drones to wipe out drug cartel dealers in the name of fighting terrorism. Defense Secretary Mark Esper refused to go along with the plan, and Esper later quit in November after the election when it became clear that Trump was going to consider using the military to stay in power after his loss.

President Trump’s defense secretary thought the idea was outrageous.

In the spring of 2020, Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary, was alarmed to learn of an idea under discussion at a top military command and at the Department of Homeland Security to send as many as 250,000 troops — more than half the active U.S. Army, and a sixth of all American forces — to the southern border in what would have been the largest use of the military inside the United States since the Civil War.

With the coronavirus pandemic raging, Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, had urged the Homeland Security Department to develop a plan for the number of troops that would be needed to seal the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico. It is not clear whether it was officials in homeland security or the Pentagon who concluded that a quarter of a million troops would be required.

The concept was relayed to officials at the Defense Department’s Northern Command, which is responsible for all military operations in the United States and on its borders, according to several former senior administration officials. Officials said the idea was never presented formally to Mr. Trump for approval, but it was discussed in meetings at the White House as they debated other options for closing the border to illegal immigration.

Mr. Esper declined to comment. But people familiar with his conversations, who would speak about them only on condition of anonymity, said he was enraged by Mr. Miller’s plan. In addition, homeland security officials had bypassed his office by taking the idea directly to military officials at Northern Command. Mr. Esper also believed that deploying so many troops to the border would undermine American military readiness around the world, officials said.

After a brief but contentious confrontation with Mr. Miller in the Oval Office, Mr. Esper ended consideration of the idea at the Pentagon.

Mr. Trump’s obsession with the southern border was already well known by that time. He had demanded a wall with flesh-piercing spikes, repeatedly mused about a moat filled with alligators, and asked about shooting migrants in the leg as they crossed the border. His aides considered a heat-ray that would make migrants’ skin feel hot.

Around the same time that officials considered the huge deployment to the American side of the border with Mexico, Mr. Trump also pressed his top aides to send forces into Mexico itself to hunt drug cartels, much like American commandos have tracked and killed terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan, the officials said.

Mr. Trump hesitated only after aides suggested that to most of the world, military raids inside Mexico could look like the United States was committing an act of war against one of its closest allies, which is also its biggest trading partner, the officials said.

In the end, rather than a vast deployment of the military to the border, the Trump administration used an obscure public health rule — which remains in effect to this day — to deny asylum and effectively shut down entry into the United States from Mexico during the pandemic. But taken together, the ideas under discussion that spring underscore the Trump administration’s view of the armed forces as a tool of the presidency that could be wielded on behalf of Mr. Trump’s domestic political agenda in an election year. And it further reveals the breach between Mr. Trump and his top military officials, who worked behind the scenes to prevent what they viewed as the president’s dangerous instincts.

Several aides to the former president did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

The Last laugh of course belongs to Miller, as Biden is using his "Remain in Mexico" plan to banish thousands of refugees due to COVID-19, and continues using ICE facilities to detain undocumented immigrants inside the US. Nothing's really changed on America's border plan from Trump to Biden, only now that Biden's doing it, it's an "unprecedented border crisis".

Of course, if Trump had won and Miller had gotten his way in a second term, we'd be talking about the thousands of refugees shot and killed by US Army troops on the border instead.

I guess that's progress, right?

The Coming Great Face(Book) Off

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is smart enough to see the writing on the wall, if the Democrats don't break up his social media empire, the Trump cultists will. As such, he's pulling a Google by reportedly forming a parent company where Facebook would be just one of the "brands", according to The Verge's Alex Heath.

Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect its focus on building the metaverse, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

The coming name change, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg plans to talk about at the company’s annual Connect conference on October 28th, but could unveil sooner, is meant to signal the tech giant’s ambition to be known for more than social media and all the ills that entail. The rebrand would likely position the blue Facebook app as one of many products under a parent company overseeing groups like Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and more. A spokesperson for Facebook declined to comment for this story.

Facebook already has more than 10,000 employees building consumer hardware like AR glasses that Zuckerberg believes will eventually be as ubiquitous as smartphones. In July, he told The Verge that, over the next several years, “we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

A rebrand could also serve to further separate the futuristic work Zuckerberg is focused on from the intense scrutiny Facebook is currently under for the way its social platform operates today. A former employee turned whistleblower, Frances Haugen, recently leaked a trove of damning internal documents to The Wall Street Journal and testified about them before Congress. Antitrust regulators in the US and elsewhere are trying to break the company up, and public trust in how Facebook does business is falling.

Facebook isn’t the first well-known tech company to change its company name as its ambitions expand. In 2015, Google reorganized entirely under a holding company called Alphabet, partly to signal that it was no longer just a search engine, but a sprawling conglomerate with companies making driverless cars and health tech. And Snapchat rebranded to Snap Inc. in 2016, the same year it started calling itself a “camera company” and debuted its first pair of Spectacles camera glasses.

I’m told that the new Facebook company name is a closely-guarded secret within its walls and not known widely, even among its full senior leadership. A possible name could have something to do with Horizon, the name of the still-unreleased VR version of Facebook-meets-Roblox that the company has been developing for the past few years. The name of that app was recently tweaked to Horizon Worlds shortly after Facebook demoed a version for workplace collaboration called Horizon Workrooms.

 

Of course the real reason this is going on is for legal reasons. With multiple attorneys general from nearly all 50 states stalking the company, spinning off into a parent company to protect its nearly trillion-dollar market cap, not to mention Zuckerberg's own 100 billion plus, is just a smart move.

 

Besides, Zuck is in a lot of personal legal trouble these days. 

The attorney general for the District of Columbia has announced that he is naming Mark Zuckerberg as a defendant in the district’s lawsuit against Facebook.

Karl Racine made the announcement Wednesday, saying that Zuckerberg had knowledge of decisions that led to the exposure of Facebook user data.

“Based on the evidence we gathered in this case over the past two years and the District’s investigation more generally, it’s clear Mr. Zuckerberg knowingly and actively participated in each decision that led to Cambridge Analytica’s mass collection of Facebook user data, and Facebook’s misrepresentations to users about how secure their data was,” Racine said in a statement to Law & Crime. “The evidence further demonstrates that Mr. Zuckerberg also participated in misleading the public and government officials about Facebook’s role. Under these circumstances, Mr. Zuckerberg should be held liable for his involvement in the decisions that enabled the exposure of millions of users’ data – and that’s why we’re adding him to our complaint.”

“Protecting the Data of Half of the District’s Residents”

It’s the first time a U.S. regulator, including an attorneys general office, specifically named Zuckerberg in a complaint, according to Racine’s office.

“My office filed our lawsuit in 2018, and since then, we’ve reviewed hundreds of thousands of pages of documents produced in litigation and completed a wide range of depositions including former employees and whistleblowers,” Racine said on Twitter. “This lawsuit is about protecting the data of half of all District residents and tens of millions of people across the country. We’ve taken our obligation to investigate wrongdoing very seriously—and Facebook should take its responsibility to protect users just as seriously.”

The parent company move makes a whole hell of a lot of sense. Besides, if Facebook gets burned to the ground, the parent company will live on doing its "metaverse" thing and being just as evil, only bigger.

Or maybe it'll collapse before Zuck's AR glasses turn everyone into privacy destroying spies.

We'll find out next week.  Or sooner!

The Vax Of Life, Con't

We're getting closer and closer to the point where a large number of vaccine providers and hospital staff are going to be arrested by Trump anti-vax cultists in red states like Montana.

The state attorney general's office Monday defended its actions after St. Peter's Health in Helena said three different public officials "threatened" hospital doctors last week over the care of a COVID-19 patient.

The patient had requested to be treated with ivermectin, a drug not approved for use against the disease.

"St. Peter’s Health can confirm that several providers were contacted by three different public officials last week regarding the treatment of a patient in our care. These conversations were deeply troubling to our physicians and staff because they were threatened and their clinical judgment was called into question by these individuals," a hospital spokesperson said in a statement emailed Monday.

The hospital did not name the elected officials in its statement, but Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen's office confirmed his participation in a conference call with hospital executives last week.

A spokesperson for the attorney general disputed the hospital's characterization of the events — which included the Attorney General’s Office dispatching a Montana Highway Patrol trooper to the hospital — as threatening or questioning the medical treatment recommended by doctors.

“The Department of Justice initiated an investigation into very troubling allegations made by the family of a patient at St Peter’s Hospital. After hearing of the allegations and the ensuing investigation, Attorney General Knudsen contacted a board member who set up a telephone conference with hospital executives," spokesperson Kyler Nerison said in the email late Monday. "No one was threatened or had their clinical judgment questioned while the Department of Justice was trying to get to the bottom of the serious allegations that the hospital was mistreating a patient and violating her rights and her family’s rights. The investigation is ongoing.”

In a response to the attorney general’s statement, the hospital again said late Monday that doctors were “harassed and threatened.”

“St. Peter’s works closely with public officials and regulatory agencies, and we occasionally receive inquiries about patient care and patient rights. Last week, several of our providers and care team members who are working tirelessly at the bedside were harassed and threatened by three public officials,” spokesperson Andrea Groom wrote. “These officials have no medical training or experience, yet they were insisting our providers give treatments for COVID-19 that are not authorized, clinically approved or within the guidelines established by the FDA and the CDC. In addition, they threatened to use their position of power to force our doctors and nurses to provide this care.”

After his office was contacted by the responding trooper last week and informed of what the trooper learned after gathering statements, Lewis and Clark County Attorney Leo Gallagher said he found no criminal offense that needed investigating.

St. Peter’s has dealt with a surge of COVID-19 patients, reaching a record-high number of people hospitalized with the virus earlier this month. The hospital, and others around the state, have reported increased hostility against health care workers over requests for treatment and enforcement of measures like mask use and visitor restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus within facilities.

 

Of course, no action will be taken against the Montana GOP in Helena for doing this. 

 

It just means the next time, red state officials will order doctors dragged out of hospitals in cuffs.

StupidiNews!

• All 21 people aboard a jet bound from Houston to Boston have survived with at worst minor injuries after the plane clipped a fence on takeoff and crash landed, flames engulfing the wreckage.
• The full House January 6th Committee has unanimously referred former Trump advisor Steve Bannon to a full House vote on criminal contempt charges expected on Thursday.
• Japan's Mount Aso has erupted, prompting officials on the southern island of Kyushu to issue warnings for ash and pyroclastic flows near the mountain.
• Congressional Democrats will drop President Biden's plan for universal free community college as Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema continue demanding infrastructure bill cuts.
• The EPA has announced a major new initiative to study and regulate industrial chemicals called PFAS that are increasingly in use by manufacturers that could pollute areas for decades.