Sunday Long Read: One Million Reasons Why

The New York Times documents the loss of one million American lives to a preventable disease, and how we as a country got here in our Sunday Long Read.

 

THE MAGNITUDE OF THE country’s loss is nearly impossible to grasp.

More Americans have died of Covid-19 than in two decades of car crashes or on battlefields in all of the country’s wars combined.

Experts say deaths were all but inevitable from a new virus of such severity and transmissibility. Yet, one million dead is a stunning toll, even for a country the size of the United States, and the true number is almost certainly higher because of undercounting.

It is the result of many factors, including elected officials who played down the threat posed by the coronavirus and resisted safety measures; a decentralized, overburdened health care system that struggled with testing, tracing and treatment; and lower vaccination and booster rates than other rich countries, partly the result of widespread mistrust and resistance fanned by right-wing media and politicians.

The virus did not claim lives evenly, or randomly. The New York Times analyzed 25 months of data on deaths during the pandemic and found that some demographic groups, occupations and communities were far more vulnerable than others. A significant proportion of the nation’s oldest residents died, making up about three-quarters of the total deaths. And among younger adults across the nation, Black and Hispanic people died at much higher rates than white people.

Understanding the toll — who makes up the one million and how the country failed them — is essential as the pandemic continues. More than 300 people are still dying of Covid every day.

“We are a country with the best doctors in the world, we got a vaccine in an astoundingly short period of time, and yet we’ve had so many deaths,” said Mary T. Bassett, the health commissioner for New York State.

“It really should be a moment for us all to reflect on what sort of society we want to have,” she added.

 

The society that we apparently want to have is one where 100,000 deaths to COVID was heart-rending, and a million deaths are the price we pay to move on from lockdowns, mask regulations, and vaccine requirements.

 

It's a society that has deliberately undercounted the deaths by maybe 50, maybe 100%, and we do everything to pretend the pandemic is over.

 

It's a society that will tolerate the deaths of hundreds of thousands, millions more, and ignore the debilitation of millions, tens of millions due to Long COVID symptoms.

 

It's the most selfish, amoral society in human history, I would think.

 

That really does describe America in 2022, doesn't it?

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Police and FBI agents have a suspect in custody in Saturday's terrorist attack at a grocery store Saturday afternoon in Buffalo, New York.  An avowed, radicalized white supremacist terrorist shot and killed at least 10 people in a Tops, a Black neighborhood grocery store, in a heavily-armed execution-style rampage by an 18-year-old white male.

Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said the supermarket shooting suspect was wearing tactical gear and livestreaming as he entered the store.

"At approximately 2:30 today, an individual who the mayor stated is not from this area and is from hours away, drove to Buffalo and went to ... the Tops market. He exited his vehicle, he was very heavily armed. He had tactical gear. He had a tactical helmet on. He had a camera that he was livestreaming what he was doing,"

The suspect is an 18-year-old White male, he said.

He shot four people in the parking lot, Gramaglia said, three of whom died.

The suspect went inside the store, where a security guard and former Buffalo police officer engaged him.

"Because he had heavily armored plating on, the bullet had no round. The suspect engaged our retired officer and he was shot and deceased at the scene. He continued to work his way through the store," Gramaglia said.

He made his way back to the front of the store, where patrol officers were able to talk him into dropping his gun after he "put the gun to his own neck."

Police arrested the suspect and transported him to Buffalo Police Headquarters.

 

The FBI is treating this as a hate crime.

Stephen Belongia, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Buffalo Field Office, said the FBI is assisting in the investigation as well during a news conference.

Erie County Sheriff John Garcia called the shooting "pure evil" during the news conference.

"It was straight-up, racially motivated hate crime from somebody outside of our community, outside of the city of good neighbors as the mayor said, coming into our community and trying to inflict that evil upon us," Garcia said.

Out of the 13 victims, 11 are Black while two are White, according to Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia.

 

A heavily-armed white supremacist terrorist in tactical gear went to this store to kill Black people and did. And when he did it, he streamed it live on Twitch.

Officials said the gunman broadcast the attack live on Twitch, the live-streaming site owned by Amazon that is popular with gamers. Twitch said it had taken the channel offline. The channel’s page said only that it was “currently unavailable due to a violation of Twitch’s community guidelines or terms of service.” In a statement, a Twitch spokeswoman said the site “has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents. The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content.”

And he had a racist, anti-Semitic manifesto ready to go after he did the deed. Repotedly, the manifesto is 100% "Great Replacement" theory bigotry, he specifically "chose" this Tops supermarket in order to kill as many Black people as he could, to stop them from "replacing" white Americans.

You know, Tucker Carlson's favorite subject.

The Fox News host has repeatedly fear-mongered about Democrats allegedly bringing in dark-skinned immigrants with the express purpose of “replacing” the American (read: white) electorate. On Wednesday night, he declared that the Biden administration is intentionally trying “to change the racial mix of the country” through immigration.

“In political terms, this policy is called ‘the great replacement,’ the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from far-away countries,” Carlson exclaimed. “They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say it's happening they will scream at you with maximum hysteria.”

The so-called “Great Replacement” theory is a white-supremacist belief in a conspiracy among liberals and wealthy elites to demographically and culturally replace the white population of majority-white countries with immigrants of non-European descent. In recent years, the theory has served as the inspiration for racist mass killings in El Paso, Pittsburgh and Christchurch, New Zealand.

Yet, despite its overtly racist and antisemitic roots, the conspiracy theory—thanks in large part to Carlson’s embrace of it—has become more acceptable and normalized within the Republican Party, with numerous GOP lawmakers and officials openly citing it.

On Thursday, in response to Carlson’s latest segment, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt renewed his calls for Fox News to dump its biggest star.

“It cannot be overstated enough,” Greenblatt said in a statement to The Daily Beast. “For Tucker Carlson, host of one of the most-watched news programs in the country, to use his platform as a megaphone to spread the toxic, antisemitic, and xenophobic ‘great replacement theory’ is a repugnant and dangerous abuse of his platform.”

Greenblatt added: “If it somehow wasn’t clear enough before to the executives at Fox News that Carlson was openly embracing white nationalist talking points, let last night’s episode be case and point. We reiterate our call to Fox News and Lachlan Murdoch: Tucker Carlson must go.”

 

That was April 2021 and again in September.

And guess what? The Great Replacement theory is accepted by half of Republican voters.  

 

Last December, the Associated Press and NORC conducted a large national poll examining conspiratorial ideas including this one. They found that nearly half of Republicans agree to at least some extent with the idea that there’s a deliberate intent to “replace” native-born Americans with immigrants.

The AP-NORC poll included several other questions related to the idea. They asked whether respondents were concerned about native-born Americans losing economic, political and cultural influence as the number of immigrants increased and whether they were concerned that the system under which elections are conducted discriminates against White Americans.

About 3 in 10 Americans overall agreed with the idea that intentional replacement was occurring or that native-born Americans were losing influence. About 1 in 5 agreed that the election system discriminated against Whites. In each case, though, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to express agreement or concern.

The pollsters also asked respondents what cable news channel they preferred. As might be expected, those who preferred Fox News were more likely than Americans overall or than those who preferred CNN or MSNBC to agree with the replacement theory idea. Three in 10 of those who prefer Fox News held the agree/concerned positions on the first two questions above. Among those who watched cable news closer to the right-wing fringe — One America News and Newsmax — the figure was 45 percent.

 

We know exactly where the terrorist in Saturday's attack was radicalized. I've been saying for years now that this was going to breed more deadly violence and today, it did.  It's racism openly supported and repeated by several sitting GOP members of Congress and 2022 candidates.

And today ,at least ten people died directly because of it.

Black Lives Still Matter.

Socially Awkward Laws

A shadow docket move late Wednesday means the 5th Circuit has sided with the Texas GOP allowing the state's anti-social media moderation law to take full effect while the law is being reviewed by the courts, meaning Texas citizens can now sue social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for any comment, content, or blocking moderation to the tune of billions.

A federal appeals court will let Texas enforce its new social media law — which targets Twitter, Facebook and other large platforms that Republicans accuse of censoring conservatives — even though the court has yet to rule on the law's constitutionality.

The one-sentence order by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, issued Wednesday evening, came with no explanation and was split 2-1, though the order did not indicate how the panel's three judges voted.

The law known as House Bill 20, approved largely along party lines by the Legislature last year, was blocked from taking effect in December by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman of Austin.

Siding with two tech industry groups that challenged the law, Pitman said HB 20 was an unconstitutional violation of social media companies' free speech rights — interfering with the platforms' editorial discretion and their First Amendment right to moderate the third-party content they disseminate.

"HB 20 prohibits virtually all content moderation, the very tool that social media platforms employ to make their platforms safe, useful, and enjoyable for users," Pitman wrote.

Wednesday's order came only two days after the appeals court heard oral arguments in which Texas lawyers defended HB 20 as a legitimate effort to ban platforms from censoring certain viewpoints.

Texas argues that the large platforms are "common carrier" public forums, subjecting them to state regulation to ensure free and unobstructed access without fear of viewpoint discrimination.

Ken Paxton, the state's Republican attorney general, called the ruling a "big win against Big Tech."

"Texas's HB 20 is back in effect," Paxton wrote on Twitter. "The 5th Circuit made the right call here, and I look forward to continuing to defend the constitutionality of HB 20."

The Texas law lets users sue if they are blocked from posting on a large platform or if their posts are removed.

Tech industry groups argued that HB 20 would open social media platforms to countless lawsuits, upending their ability to enforce content moderation policies and protect users from abusive posts, scams or falsehoods.

Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice, which challenged the Texas law, said the industry group plans to immediately appeal the order, which he called "an unusual and unfortunate move" because it was issued without explanation or addressing the law's merits.

 

The countless lawsuits and inability to protect users from abuse, disinformation, and harassment is the entire point, and as of right now, expect any efforts to moderate the worst, most racist, most misogynist, most antisemitic content on social media to end immediately.

And if this is upheld by SCOTUS, and there's no reason to think otherwise, expect the end of social media as we know it.

Trump's Truth Social and white supremacist hotbeds like Gab and Parler will be the only games in town very soon.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

Time and time again, in instance after instance, in state after state, the "widespread election fraud" of 2020 always turns out to be Republicans getting caught trying to rig the election for Donald Trump and the GOP.

A former elections supervisor in rural Coffee County, Ga., has told The Washington Post that she opened her offices to a businessman active in the election-denier movement to help investigate results she did not trust in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat.

Trump had carried the conservative county by 40 points, but elections supervisor Misty Hampton said she remained suspicious of Joe Biden’s win in Georgia. Hampton made a video that went viral soon after the election, claiming to show that Dominion Voting System machines, the ones used in her county, could be manipulated. She said in interviews that she hoped the Georgia businessman who visited later, Scott Hall, and others who accompanied him could help identify vulnerabilities and prove “that this election was not done true and correct.”

Hampton said she could not remember when the visit occurred or what Hall and the others did when they were there. She said they did not enter a room that housed the county’s touch-screen voting machines, but she said she did not know whether they entered the room housing the election management system server, the central computer used to tally election results.

“I’m not a babysitter,” she told The Post.

Hall, who owns a bail bond business, did not respond to requests for comment.

Voting experts said that, whether they accessed sensitive areas or not, Hampton’s actions underscore a growing risk to election security.

In the year and a half since the 2020 election, there has been steady drumbeat of revelations about alleged security breaches in local elections offices — and a growing concern among experts that officials who are sympathetic to claims of vote-rigging might be persuaded to undermine election security in the name of protecting it.

“Insider threat, while always part of the threat matrix, is now a reality in elections,” said Matt Masterson, who previously served as a senior U.S. cybersecurity official tracking 2020 election integrity for the Department of Homeland Security.

Suspected or attempted breaches have spurred law enforcement investigations in Colorado, Michigan and Ohio. One such case has already led to criminal charges. Tina Peters, an elections official in Mesa County, Colo., was indicted in March on charges stemming from her alleged efforts to secretly copy a Dominion Voting Systems server last year.

Details continue to emerge from other places where outsiders may have sought access to voting machines. In Michigan, state police are investigating an alleged breach of voting equipment after the 2020 election in Roscommon County. A local NBC television affiliate in western Michigan reported last week that police had raided a township office in a different county as part of that investigation.

Meanwhile, some prominent election deniers have sought help from officials with access to protected voting systems, and others — including Peters in Colorado — are running to oversee elections as secretaries of state.

Voting systems are considered by the federal government to be “critical infrastructure,” vital to national security, and access to their software and other components is tightly regulated. In several instances since 2020, machines have been taken out of service after their chain of custody was interrupted.

Hampton told The Post she was unaware of guidance the Georgia secretary of state’s office had sent to county election administrators saying that voting equipment and software must not be released to the public absent a court order. And she questioned why access should be so restricted.

“I don’t see why anything that is dealing with elections is not open to the public,” Hampton said. “Why would you want to hide anything?"

 

Yes, because Republicans certainly would never use election data to defraud the public.

The same people screeching about "internet-connected voting machines" are the same people "opening their offices to random businessmen" and giving them direct voter data so it can be "used to investigate fraud". 

You know, committing election fraud so they can investigate election fraud.

They won't stop this year or especially in 2024.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The House January 6th Committee is finally, finally, issuing subpoenas for sitting Republican lawmakers who were January 6th co-conspirators and terrorists.

 

The committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has subpoenaed five Republican members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), after they refused to cooperate with the panel’s inquiry.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the select committee, said Thursday that the panel has subpoenaed McCarthy and Reps. Mo Brooks (Ala.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio).

The move marks a significant escalation in the committee’s efforts to obtain information related to lawmakers’ communications with then-President Donald Trump and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows before, during and after the attack.

In a statement, Thompson said the committee “has learned that several of our colleagues have information relevant to our investigation into the attack on January 6th and the events leading up to it.”

“Before we hold our hearings next month, we wished to provide members the opportunity to discuss these matters with the committee voluntarily,” Thompson said. “Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused and we’re forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning January 6th. We urge our colleagues to comply with the law, do their patriotic duty, and cooperate with our investigation as hundreds of other witnesses have done.”

Until Thursday, the committee had been reluctant to subpoena GOP lawmakers because of a variety of issues, including time constraints — a complex and lengthy legal fight could last beyond the November midterm elections — along with fears of retribution in the likely case that Republicans win back the House majority.

All five of the Republican lawmakers subpoenaed Thursday have declined to voluntarily provide information to the committee.

 

Democrats have stopped being scared of doing their job. Will there be enough time left to actually enforce these subpoenas? Of course not, these will get tied up in court for years at best, well after the Committee's mandate is up. But since everyone knows that, issuing the subpoenas makes it clear we have January 6th co-conspirators as sitting Republican members of the House.

That's going to make the hearings next month very spicy, and gives you a baseline when all five of these assholes state that they were never given a chance to defend themselves.

Stay tuned.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

So the answer to "Will anyone at the Justice Department prosecute Donald Trump for keeping thousands of documents, many classified material, at Mar-a-Lago in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act?" is "Actually yes, we have a federal grand jury looking into possible charges now."

Federal prosecutors have begun a grand jury investigation into whether classified White House documents that ended up at former President Donald J. Trump’s Florida home were mishandled, according to two people briefed on the matter.

The intensifying inquiry suggests that the Justice Department is examining the role of Mr. Trump and other officials in his White House in their handling of sensitive materials during the final stages of his administration.

In recent days, the Justice Department has taken a series of steps showing that its investigation has progressed beyond the preliminary stages. Prosecutors issued a subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration to obtain the boxes of classified documents, according to the two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

The authorities have also made interview requests to people who worked in the White House in the final days of Mr. Trump’s presidency, according to one of the people.

The investigation is focused on the discovery by the National Archives in January that at the end of Mr. Trump’s term he had taken to his home at the Mar-a-Lago resort 15 boxes from the White House that contained government documents, mementos, gifts and letters.

After the boxes were returned to the National Archives, its archivists found documents containing “items marked as classified national security information,” the agency told Congress in February. In April, it was reported that federal authorities were in the preliminary stages of investigating the handling of the classified documents.

The subpoena that was sent to the National Archives in recent days for the classified documents is one of a series of requests that the Justice Department has made to the agency for records from the Trump administration in recent months, according to the two people.

A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The public affairs office at the National Archives did not return an email message seeking comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Taylor Budowich, said: “President Trump consistently handled all documents in accordance with applicable law and regulations. Belated attempts to second-guess that clear fact are politically motivated and misguided.”

 

It's funny that Trump's people are immediately calling this a "politically motivated witch hunt" except the with in this case was sitting in Trump's basement unsecured where several people had access to classified material that Trump kept after he left office. 

This is pretty much an open and shut case. The Presidential Records Act clearly says Trump can't remove presidential records and take them home with him, even if he declassifies it. He certainly can't keep them in his place of residence after he left office. 

If this is how Trump gets prosecuted, great, but once again there's no jurors that won't be hunted, doxxed, and attacked as MAGA public enemy #1 in order to force a mistrial, and even if you believe the feds can keep a trial jury safe without multiple people in the process being Trump voters who will gladly intimidate jurors, there's no way no jury that won't include at least one Trump voter who will make sure he's never convicted.

Bringing charges against Trump will absolutely generate deadly mob violence, and I don't believe our federal trial system and federal law enforcement agencies are ready to deal with that. It failed miserably at January 6th and people died as a result.

Imagine violent January 6th protests all across the country.

That's the starting point.

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Republicans, in their never-ending quest to kill poor Black people before they become Medicaid "burdens", are now refusing to pay for any more vaccine doses until the Biden Administration comes up with a plan to "take responsibility and wind down" COVID-fighting efforts heading into the 2022 midterms.

Congressional Republicans' concerns about wasting COVID vaccines are colliding with the Biden administration's commitment to making the shots as widely accessible as possible, adding another wrinkle to the stalled COVID funding negotiations.

The intrigue: Some Republicans are growing skeptical of the currently available vaccines' ability to contain the Omicron variant, and don't want to allocate money for more doses without a firmer plan in place for the fall.

The big picture: Democrats stripped more than $15 billion of funding for more COVID countermeasures from a spending bill in March due to internal divisions over how the package would be paid for.Democrats and Republicans have been at loggerheads since then, and the administration has warned that the country won't have critical tools for managing the virus this fall without new funding. But two senior GOP Senate aides say that Republicans are also raising broader questions about the administration's vaccine strategy.

State of play: COVID vaccines are packaged and distributed in multi-dose vials. Once a vial of Pfizer or Moderna's mRNA vaccine is opened, it must be used the same day, because the vaccines don't contain preservatives.In practice, that forces a choice between throwing out unused doses and limiting the number of places offering vaccines at any given time to concentrate demand.

Yes, but: Republicans say the current strategy is wasteful, and it would be better to rein in accessibility so that more doses are likely to be used.Although the administration is working with vaccine makers on updated vial sizes, including single-use vials, these aren't expected to be ready until late this year or early next year, according to a senior Biden administration official. 

"If someone arrives at a rural or urban site and they're the only one who shows up that day, they can get a vaccine," the official said. "From a public health policy, we want to ensure that everyone has easy access, no matter where they live."

By the numbers: As of now, 79% of available vaccine doses distributed in the U.S. have been administered to patients, according to Department of Health and Human Services officials.That figure is an average over the last year and a half, but there have been fluctuations. The administration didn't specify how many doses are currently going unused or how the rate has changed over time. 

"Vaccine utilization was very high in the early months of the vaccination campaign and has decreased in recent months; however, our commitment to providing vaccine, and now boosters, to anyone who wants one remains unchanged," the HHS officials wrote in an email.

The other thing: It's no secret that Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines don't work as well against the Omicron variant, although they remain highly effective preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Pfizer and Moderna are testing updated vaccines that are target Omicron as well as the original COVID-19 strain.Some Republicans want to prioritize buying therapeutics, given the vaccines' reduced effectiveness and the evolution of the virus. 

"Republicans are skeptical of using federal money to buy more vaccines that are proving not to last very long and questions remain if they will work against future variants," one senior GOP Senate aide told Axios. "We're not saying don't get vaccinated. We're saying that the current shot and boosters are reducing in effectiveness. New vax isn't ready and it's unclear where they are in the plan," the aide added. "Since there is no plan, we don't want to give them blank check."

The other side: The administration says it has a plan, and the problem is lawmakers haven't authorized the money to implement it.

 

So, by accepting the Republican framing ("The pandemic is over, it's time to start winding down COVID-fighting efforts") the White House and blue state Dems are now stuck in a Catch-22: Republicans are refusing to pay for more COVID vaccines because the vaccines are "ineffective", and the White House vaccine campaigns have been sabotaged for 16 months by Republicans every step of the way to make it so.

 

That sabotage is continuing now.

Pennsylvania's May Surprise

With Pennsylvania's Senate primaries just days away, the front-runner on the Republican side is another Trump MAGA nutjob, just not the rich MAGA nutjob Trump has endorsed.

Wearing a bright smile, Kathy Barnette shook hands and introduced herself around the patio of a Montgomery County country club: “I’m Kathy, and I’m running for United States Senate,” she said.

But many already knew that. ”People are hearing my story,” she told one voter Monday. “The momentum has been amazing.”

Few would disagree.

Running on a shoestring budget and with a personal story that begins on an Alabama pig farm, Barnette has rocketed to the forefront of Pennsylvania’s crucial Republican Senate primary, according to both public and private polling. She’s picked up late momentum as she challenges her big-spending rivals Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.

Her rise in the final days before Tuesday’s primary has stunned operatives in both parties, upending a Senate race that could decide control of the chamber.

“Everyone knows Oz is running for this race. Everyone knows McCormick is running in this race, and they’re holding their nose,” Barnette said in an interview Monday. “When they break, the undecideds, they’re gonna break in my direction. There’s nothing [Oz and McCormick] can possibly say to these people... that they haven’t already said, because they’ve spent such an insane amount of money.”

» READ MORE: From last year: She lost big in the Philly suburbs. She went hunting for voter fraud. Now Kathy Barnette is a rising GOP star.

Rival campaigns, along with news outlets, were scrambling this week to vet Barnette and her backstory. Top Senate operatives in both parties are so unfamiliar with her that they were at a loss about whether she’d make a strong general election candidate.

Questions are starting to simmer about some of Barnette’s links to fringe elements on the right, her false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, and some of her past incendiary comments — including a 2017 tweet about banning Islam and a 2010 opinion piece claiming that the “homosexual AGENDA” was seeking “domination.”

But with less than a week to go, it was also unclear if any of that would sink in with voters.

“She’s a gigantic question mark,” said one Washington Republican closely following the race.

And she’s gaining steam.

Wednesday brought her a major endorsement from the political arm of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, which also announced a $2 million TV ad buy to boost her. A day earlier, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List backed Barnette, and a Fox News survey showed her effectively tied with Oz and McCormick, with all three polling within the margin of error of one another.

Barnette, of Montgomery County, argues that undecided Republicans are looking for a more authentic alternative after hearing so much from Oz and McCormick on TV. Despite spending tens of millions of dollars on the race, the two men who have sucked up most of the attention have failed, so far, to win over a decisive share of the electorate.

“What [supporters] find in me is a sense of authenticity,” Barnette told The Inquirer. “They see me as one of them. And if our leadership is listening, then they would pay attention to that.”

McCormick and two super PACs funded by his wealthy allies have poured more than $35 million into the contest, while Oz and his supporters have spent more than $18 million. Each man put in at least $11 million of his own money.

Barnette’s campaign had spent less than $2 million as of April 27, according to the latest financial filings.

But Oz and McCormick often skipped smaller public forums and relied on big-name support (including former President Donald Trump for Oz and Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, for McCormick), Barnette has kept a relentless campaign schedule, crisscrossing the state with a sharp-edged message and pugilistic debate performances. She would be the first Black person and the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania.

“I knew I would not be able to compete dollar for dollar with these people, but I believe I have a better message,” Barnette said. “And all I’ve done is just walk outside of my home to deliver that message.”

 

It would be a heartwarming tale of a Black woman beating not one but two millionaire men who focused on each other instead of her and knocked each other out, leaving Barnette to take the nomination, except for the fact that we're talking about which awful Republican is going to try to destroy our country.

 

And Barnette is just as awful as the rest, as Steve M. reminds us.

In the race for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, another extremist zealot -- also an election truther -- might be poised for an upset win, and again, party regulars are panicking.

Influential Republicans in Washington and among the nationwide party elite are having a belated "oh s--t" moment over the previously unimaginable prospect that Kathy Barnette could win their party's nomination for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania....

Trump ally Steve Bannon described Barnette as an "audience favorite" for his "War Room" podcast....

He's praised her for having never stopped talking about decertifying the 2020 Biden election and for refusing to concede her own loss in a 2020 House race.

 (Barnette refused to concede even though she lost that race by 19 points.)

Barnette's also close to the pillow entrepreneur and "Stop the Steal" leader Mike Lindell. And she's effectively running on a ticket with the leading Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, state Sen. Doug Mastriano. 

She's surged in the polls from mid-single digits as recently as April to around 20% now.

She's only 2 points behind front-runner Mehmet Oz in the latest Fox poll.

Barnette has a social media history that could cause her problems in a general election.
She has also written that "the homosexual movement" seeks "domination" over the culture.

So if she wins the nomination, maybe she'll have a harder time winning the votes of center-right upscale suburbanites than Oz or David McCormick would.

 

Republican racism, Islamophobia, and homophobia aren't a dealbreaker for a Black woman running for Senate in the Republican party. Think about that.

Oh, and what if these Trump "election fraud" Big Liars loses in 2022 in a close race in a GOP state?

Steve M. again:

So what happens if one or both of these passionate election truthers loses by a few points in November? What happens if election truthers lose in other purple states -- Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin? An NBC story about Mastriano focuses on his possible role in the 2024 election if he's elected ("Should Mastriano win in the fall, he would have broad authority in overseeing elections by appointing a secretary of state") -- but what happens this year if he isn't elected, or if Barnette is the nominee and she isn't? Do you think the right will quietly accept any losses outside deep-blue states?

All the states I've named have Republican-dominated legislatures. I think there'll be demands for legislative intervention in any purple state where Democrats manage a statewide victory. There could be deomnstrations and violence. We could be looking at January 6-style insurrections all over the country, if the expected GOP wave doesn't happen.

When the media talks about threats to democracy, it focuses only on presidential elections. But democracy happens in the states, too. And that's where it might break down this year.

 

In a state like Michigan where jurors refused to accept the kidnapping plot against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer?  Yes, I absolutely believe we're going to see violence over Republican losses in red states, and I fully expect those races to be overturned on "evidence of fraud". 

It will get worse.

The Big Lie, Con't

Former Trump White House legal adviser John Eastman has been fighting long and hard to conceal his emails involving the January 6th conspiracy to defraud the United States and declare Trump the "winner" of the 2020 presidential election, and with Eastman losing that fight, we now see exactly why.

Attorney John Eastman urged Republican legislators in Pennsylvania to retabulate the state’s popular vote — and throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots — in order to show Donald Trump with a lead, according to newly unearthed emails sent in December 2020, as Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to subvert his defeat.

This recalculation, he posited in an exchange with one GOP state lawmaker, “would help provide some cover” for Republicans to replace Joe Biden’s electors from the state with a slate of pro-Trump electors, part of a last-ditch bid to overturn the election results.

Per the exchange, Eastman suggested that GOP legislators could simply cite their concerns with Pennsylvania’s absentee ballot procedures and then use historical data to “discount each candidates’ totals by a prorated amount based on the absentee percentage those candidates otherwise received.”

“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,” Eastman wrote in a Dec. 4, 2020 email to Pennsylvania Rep. Russ Diamond. “That would help provide some cover.”

Biden ultimately won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.

The exchange was part of a batch of emails obtained from the University of Colorado, where Eastman worked as a visiting professor at the time he was helping Trump strategize ways to remain in power. The emails were obtained via public records requests by the Colorado Ethics Institute, which sent them along to the Jan. 6 select committee last month. It’s unclear whether the select committee had previously obtained these emails — which are available via public records requests — or whether they are in receipt of the Colorado group’s files.

The Denver Post first reported on the existence of the emails.

The Jan. 6 select committee is fighting a legal battle with Eastman in federal court in California to obtain hundreds of emails Eastman sent and received via his other previous employer, Chapman University. The panel has already won several rounds in this case, obtaining key emails Eastman sent from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021, but the panel is still fighting to receive thousands of pages sent in the run-up to Jan. 6.

The select committee and Eastman’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Simply throw out enough Biden votes until you had enough Trump votes to win. 

That was the solution.

At some point these bastards have to go to jail.  I'm hoping that next month's public hearings on January 6th will help, but referring Eastman and others to the Justice Department still means Merrick Garland has to build the case and prosecute it, and I've made the point that this won't happen at the very least until 2023.

We're running out of time.

Last Call For Ending The Fed's Blackout

The first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board will be Biden nominee Lisa Cook, a Michigan State economist, after Kamala Harris broke the tie in a 50-50 Senate vote where of course, just as with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, every single Republican voted against the extremely qualified Black woman.

The economist Lisa Cook was confirmed Tuesday as the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve Board in a historic moment for the central bank as it tries to stabilize a recovery that serves all Americans.

Cook was confirmed by a 51-to-50 vote in the Senate, with Vice President Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. No Republicans voted for Cook, and Democrats, who hold a razor-thin majority, had delayed moving forward on her nomination until they could assemble all 50 of their members to back her.

Cook is among the country’s preeminent economists and teaches at Michigan State University. Her research has focused on macroeconomics, economic history, international finance and innovation, particularly on how hate-related violence has harmed U.S. economic growth. Her work has analyzed how patent records show that the riots, lynchings and Jim Crow laws that targeted African American communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s hurt Black people’s ability to pursue inventions and discoveries at the time.

“If there is something that impedes the rate of arrival of ideas, you’re going to slow down the economy,” Cook said on the “Planet Money” podcast in 2020. “It’s not just for that period. And it’s not just for Black people. This is a cautionary tale for all economies.”

Cook also worked on the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration and has held visiting appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the University of Michigan and the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.

President Biden has sought to assemble the most diverse Fed board in the agency’s 108-year history. And Fed experts say the package of nominees the White House recently named goes a long way toward fulfilling Biden’s promise to make the Fed more reflective of the country it serves.

 

Republicans lost their shit over this, to the point where Mitch McConnell held a press conference and  warned President Biden that he should pull Cook's nomination as a Black woman on the Federal Reserve or else. Republicans were able to stall the vote for three months, in fact.

But it's Cook's historic macroeconomics work on the billions lost through racism that Republicans can never tolerate. It's too bad though, Cook will be on the Fed anyway.

Biden did that.

You'd Better Watch Yourself

Senate Republicans want the the government to specifically warn parents about LGBTQ+ characters on television and streaming shows "aimed at children", because making sure kids know treating queer folk as something to be warned against is totally not indoctrination, Jesus hell.

 

A group of Republican senators is calling for the country's television ratings system to warn parents about "sexual orientation and gender identity content" on children's TV shows.

In a two-page letter dated May 4, Sens. Mike Braun, R-Ind., Roger Marshall, R-Kan., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., made the request to the chairman of the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board.


The TV Parental Guidelines is a television and film content rating system that Congress, the broadcast industry and the Federal Communications Commission created in 1996 “to give parents more information about the content and age-appropriateness of TV program.” The rating icons — including TV-G, TV-PG and TV-MA — are typically displayed at the top of a screen as a program begins.

“In recent years, concerning topics of a sexual nature have become aggressively politicized and promoted in children’s programming, including irreversible and harmful experimental treatments for mental disorders like gender dysphoria,” the letter reads. "To this end, we strongly urge you to update the TV Parental Guidelines and ensure they are up-to-date on best practices that help inform parents on this disturbing content."

The TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board confirmed to NBC News that it had received the senators' letter, but it declined to comment further.

The senators' request comes amid a nationwide discussion over how and when children should learn about LGBTQ issues or identities, as well as an uptick in charged rhetoric surrounding the lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer community.

 

Because we can't for a second have anyone under 18 see any positive image of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, aromatic, asexual, queer, non-binary or any non heterosexual person at all.

Republicans are going to take power and regulate all non-white non-Christian, and non-straight people out of existence, especially in media.  They've been playing the long game on this all my life, and they are absolutely winning.

Unless we stop them.

Be Preg, Do Crimes

Steve M. makes a lot of sense here with his recent post on the extremely possible future of Prohibition-era abortion.

I'm thinking about it in connection with something else I'm reading that wouldn't seem to be related at all -- the 2010 memoir by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. He was a junkie for years, and he makes the point that he began using heroin at a time when the Stones were hugely successful and hobnobbing with swells. He writes: 

And the reason I'm here is probably that we only ever took, as much as possible, the real suff, the top-quality stuff. Cocaine I only got into because it was pure pharmaceutical -- boom. When I was introduced to dope, it was all pure, pure, pure. You didn't have to worry about what's it cut with and go through all that street shit. 

This was also a time when Britain registered heroin addicts and provided them the drugs. Richards says junkies claimed they needed twice as much as they were actually using, then sold the rest. Users like Richards bought it -- but it was unadulterated.

For abortion, I'm imagining a future when the medical procedure will be very difficult to obtain -- pursuing doctors who perform abortions will be a moral crusade, conducted with more righteous zeal than it was in the immediate pre-Roe era. And the same will be true for anyone who provides abortion drugs. And I think eventually abortion will be banned nationwide, by a Republican Party with full control in D.C.

Most recreational drugs are illegal in America, yet we get them. How? Thanks to organized crime. Organized crime is also how gay bars managed to stay in business before the gay liberation movement -- the Stonewall Inn was a Mob bar.

I'm imagining a future in which obtaining abortion drugs will be like buying cocaine or meth -- you'll be able to make the purchase because shady characters make it possible. If you have the money and the right connection, you'll get the pure abortion pills imported from Europe or Canada; if not, well, good luck. Probably you'll get something that's not (or not very) adulterated, but it'll come with no guarantees. It'll be "street shit."

Doctors who perform abortions might need organized crime protections, too. When a group of pre-Roe feminists known as the Janes began providing abortions in Chicago in the late 1960s, "it was rumored that many Chicago abortion services paid for Mob protection," according to Chicago magazine. One history of the group says that "Mike, the man who taught the first Jane volunteers how to perform abortions, had learned from a Mafia doctor." All this could be our future.

Depressing that health care would then become something like this, but while it wouldn't necessarily be back alley abortions, it would be back alley mifepristone, and it may not be the pure shit. "Women finding a way to have abortions" is basically the story of women  throughout the history of humanity, but I honestly didn't expect this chapter to be written until maybe ten years ago when the backlash to Obama really started.

I know better now. I hate that we have to prepare for this future, but we'd be nuts not to because federal ban or not, abortion will be illegal in states like Kentucky in the coming weeks.

This future is now.

Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is saving kids from imaginary indoctrination in schools by government edict with actual school indoctrination edicts handed down by Florida Republicans.

Public school teachers in Florida will soon be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” to teach students about communist leaders around the world and how people suffered under those regimes. 

Speaking at Miami’s Freedom Tower before a crowd of local lawmakers and supporters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 395, which designates Nov. 7 as the state’s official “Victims of Communism Day,” making Florida one of a handful of states to adopt the designation. 

It is, however, the first state to mandate school instruction on that day, as Florida Republicans continue to seize on education policy while placing school curriculum at the forefront of their political priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms. The bill, which DeSantis signed along with two street designations in honor of Cuban exiles, would require the instruction to begin in the 2023-2024 school year. 

It would require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes. 

“That body count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand because it is a direct result of this communist ideology,” DeSantis said, noting that tens of millions of people died in China under his rule. “I know we don’t need legislation here to do this but I think it’s our responsibility to make sure people know about the atrocities committed by people like Fidel Castro and even more recently people like Nicolas Maduro.”

To recap, teaching Florida kids about authoritarian fascist slavery in other countries is mandated. Teaching Florida kids about authoritarian fascist slavery in this country is divisive critical race theory that makes white kids feel bad and must never, ever be mentioned.

Do you see why this is a problem?

The US Chamber Of Culture Combat

Republicans are making it clear that Disney will only be the first target in bringing corporate America to heel should voter but them back in charge of Congress in November, with the GOP introducing the Non-Woke Chamber Of Non-Diverse Commerce for approved, right-thinking businesses to join (and to donate billions to Republican candidates through) or risk having those billions taken through vengeance politics.

 

A new business lobby backed by Republican heavyweights is looking to build clout with GOP leaders amid high-profile splits between the party's policymakers and key segments of corporate America, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce is positioning itself as an alternative to groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The new group's backers complain the Chamber has lurched left from its onetime post at the vanguard of a Republican-aligned political apparatus.The chairman of the AmFree chamber, as it's known internally, is Terry Branstad — the former Republican governor of Iowa and President Trump's ambassador to China. 

Its CEO is Gentry Collins, a former political director of the Republican National Committee. The AmFree Chamber will provide an avenue for American businesses looking to influence Republicans, who appear poised to retake congressional majorities next year.

What's happening: The new chamber's formation comes as corporate America grapples with increasing pressure to engage on issues such as voting rights, racial justice and abortion — and the potential political fallout from doing so."I hope to make the case to our policymakers at all levels that we must move away from the trend towards socialism and back to a pro-business, pro-growth posture," Branstad told business leaders during a conference call last Thursday, which Axios also attended. 

In a memo pitching the group to potential members, a copy of which was obtained by Axios, the AmFree Chamber offers "tools for American businesses to maintain access to the marketplace in the face of 'woke capital' and 'cancel-culture' threats," among other benefits.

The big picture: A high-profile split last year between the U.S. Chamber and congressional Republicans — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the potential next Speaker — provides a lane for a group that can effectively wield influence among GOP leaders, say sources close to the project."The void that is filled is [the AmFree Chamber] isn’t dead to Hill Republicans who will likely control the floor of both House and Senate" next year, one Republican lobbyist told Axios. 

A senior House leadership aide told Axios the U.S. Chamber has "become more interested in electing so-called pro-business Democrats who vote for their party’s decidedly anti-business, woke agenda. It’s no surprise Governor Branstad and others have recognized this and are stepping in to fill this void," the aide said.

What they're saying: "[W]e warmly welcome anyone who joins our agenda, advocating for businesses and their workers. We need the pro-business voices to be heard loud and clear," a U.S. Chamber spokesperson told Axios.The group "has worked with our network of state and local chambers across the country to secure important legislation, benefiting businesses of all sizes and our country as a whole," the spokesperson said, citing its work on trade, inflation, infrastructure and "the threat of government overreach." "To find viable solutions, we need to collaborate and work with all stakeholders."

Between the lines: Multiple sources close to the new Branstad group used the term "woke" to describe the U.S. Chamber, a social-justice buzzword that's been relegated largely to the domain of conservative critics.One source pointed to the group's engagement on ESG, or environmental, social and corporate governance business practices, and positions on tech sector regulation at odds with Republican critics of the industry. 

Another brought up its preservation of scaffolding on its Lafayette Square headquarters covered by graffiti and artwork during 2020's Black Lives Matter protests. While candidates still regularly tout the endorsements from the chamber and its state affiliates, it's become a political epithet in some high-profile Republican primary contests.

 

Look, I'm no fan of trillion-dollar companies like Apple, Alphabet or Amazon. I actually do think these companies should be ground into anti-trust dust by the government and either broken into pieces or put out of business for good. 

But that has nothing to do with "free speech" practices like the GOP is tossing around here.

 

Republicans are now openly threatening any business they deem as "woke" for being targeted by mobs, boycotts, lawsuits and legislation until there is capitulation...or else. Bad press, conservative boycotts, legislation targeting the company specifically, whatever it takes to get 100% of donations given to the GOP machine.

 

The shakedown is one thing, but the implications are strong here that Republicans will target and criminalize corporate diversity practices, inclusiveness, and hiring until companies are hiring nothing but white men again.

 

You will be made to comply, corporate citizen...

Folding Like A Lawn Chair

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (and I know what I said) wasted no time Monday giving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell his biggest win of the not-quite post-Roe era so far.

Members of the US Senate passed a bipartisan bill Monday that would expand security protection to the immediate family members of Supreme Court justices, following protests at some justices' homes over the weekend. 

The Supreme Court Police Parity Act was approved by unanimous consent, meaning no senators objected to its quick passage. The legislation must also be passed by the House before going to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature. 

The push in Congress comes one week after Politico's bombshell leaked draft of an opinion, which indicated the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade as soon as next month. 

Sens. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, and Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, introduced the bipartisan bill called the Supreme Court Police Parity Act. 

"The events of the past week have intensified the focus on Supreme Court Justices' families, who are unfortunately facing threats to their safety in today's increasingly polarized political climate," said Cornyn in a news release ahead of the bill's passage Monday evening. "We must act to ensure Justices and their families are protected from those who wish to cause them harm by extending Supreme Court police security to family members." 

Coons added in the release: "If the families of Supreme Court Justices have the same profile and exposure as the highest ranking officials in our government, they deserve the same level of protection. We must take threats that come from extremes on both sides of the political spectrum against Supreme Court Justices seriously, and that makes this bill an unfortunate necessity." 

Over the weekend, pro-abortion rights protesters gathered outside the private homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts in Chevy Chase, Maryland, outside Washington, DC. 

While protests around the country have been largely peaceful, law enforcement officials in the nation's capital have been bracing for potential security risks. Last week, an 8-foot-tall, non-scalable fence was installed around parts of the Supreme Court building, and crews set up concrete Jersey barriers blocking the street in front of the court. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed the protests outside some justices' homes, saying they may be "flat-out illegal," citing a federal law that criminalizes pickets with the intent of influencing a judge. 

"Trying to scare federal judges into ruling a certain way is far outside the bounds of First Amendment speech or protest; it's an attempt to replace the rule of law with the rule of mobs," the Kentucky Republican said in remarks on the Senate floor on Monday. 

 

So in a unanimous, bipartisan, historic vote, Schumer and all 50 Senate Dems agreed to the Republican framing that picketing Justices Kegstand and Alito is the liberal January 6th insurrection and that we have to protect judges from A N T I F A, and protesting peacefully is just as bad and probably even worse than the actual January 6th domestic terrorist seditious insurrection. On top of that, the unanimity of the Senate Democratic vote means Pelosi has no choice but to put this on the floor before the end of the week.

We can't kill the filibuster and pass a federal abortion law, but 100% of the US Senate agrees that pro-choice protesters need to go to fucking prison. In fact, the Biden Administration has scrambled to bash peaceful protesters.

 

.@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) May 9, 2022

 

The judges decided that noone of child-bearing capability has any right to personal safety, folks. Protesting outside Kavanaugh's house is literally the least that needs to be done right now. 

If the Dems are trying to purposefully depress voting turnout over the end of Roe, I couldn't have asked for a more effective plan if I was Mitch himself. Remember, this wasn't a problem until Democrats actually used their free speech. Republicans can "threaten judges" all day.

Jackasses.