The Circus Clowns On

Michigan Republicans, blaming Trump for their staggering losses in November, have elected a new state GOP chair that makes Trump look sane.

Kristina Karamo, who refused to concede her 14-point loss for secretary of state in 2022, beat former attorney general candidate Matt DePerno, who had Trump’s endorsement, in three rounds of contentious voting. The chaotic 11-hour convention, featuring a rowdy standoff over voting procedures and 10 candidates who all ran under a pro-Trump banner, left no doubt that the bulk of the party’s activists in this key battleground state remain firmly committed to election denial and showed no interest in moderating their message to appeal to the political center.

“Conceding to a fraudulent person is agreeing with the fraud, which I will not do,” Karamo said to cheers in her campaign speech on Saturday.

The outcome also dealt a tactical defeat to Trump, even though all the candidates competed for aligning themselves with him. Many delegates said they discounted or even resented Trump’s involvement in the race, especially after a midterm cycle that saw widespread wrangling over his down-ballot endorsements in the state.

“We love Donald Trump, but he don’t live here,” said Mark Forton, another candidate for chair who endorsed Karamo.

In a Thursday speech to a right-wing “patriot” group in nearby Charlotte, Karamo argued that Christianity belonged at the core of American politics, called evolution “one of the biggest frauds ever perpetuated on society,” and asserted the existence of demons.

“When we start talking about the spiritual reality of the demonic forces, it’s like, ‘Oh, my God, this is crazy, we can’t go there,’” Karamo said. “No. It’s like, did you read the Bible? Didn’t Jesus perform exorcisms? … Scriptures are clear. And so if we’re not operating as though the spirit realities of the world exist, we’re going to fail every time.”

In 2022, Democrats swept statewide races in Michigan and won control of both legislative chambers, achieving full statewide control for the first time since the 1980s. In 2024, the state is poised to host early primary contests and be a competitive presidential and Senate battleground.

“Do I think it destroyed the state party? For sure,” Christine Barnes, an unsuccessful state House candidate who skipped this year’s convention, said of Trump’s interventions. “And the party is a hot mess right now.”

The outcome here Saturday underscores the stark reality confronting Republicans across the country: Months after general election voters across the country rejected extreme, election-denying candidates such as Karamo, DePerno and former Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, many party activists remain enthralled by them. Some Republicans have voiced concern that this trend could set the party back at the ballot box in future races.

Lake, who has yet to concede defeat in Arizona and has waged an unsuccessful legal fight to challenge the results of her 2022 race, has been traveling the country promoting false election claims, as she weighs a run for U.S. Senate in 2024. And Trump, in his third run for president, continues to promote false claims about the 2020 election.

Trump held a tele-rally for DePerno on Monday, calling him a “defender of election integrity.” DePerno rose to prominence as a lawyer chasing conspiracy theories in Michigan’s 2020 election; a Republican state Senate report faulted him for spreading misinformation, and he came under state investigation for allegedly tampering with voting machines.

But some delegates said they grew to doubt DePerno because, unlike Karamo, he conceded his loss in November.

“Matt ran out on us; he didn’t fight for us,” said Mark DeYoung, a delegate from Harrison, Mich., and chairman of the Clare County GOP.

 

Observations:

 

1. Donald Trump is a loser. He knows full well that if the Not Trump vote can decide on a single candidate in 2024, he's done. He'll do everything he can to prevent that.
2. The Republican party is the party of white supremacist male "Christian" theocracy. Anyone who doesn't fit the bill, even Kristina Karamo, will be disposed of as soon as possible even if they win now, and the rest will be made expendable as well.
   
3. None of this is a dealbreaker for people still in the GOP. If you're still supporting them, you're enabling the very madness, bigotry, and hatred you supposedly don't believe in. You get to live with that cowardice. Unfortunately the rest of us fighting it have to live with your enabling too. That makes you the enemy as well, and we'll fight you.
4. At some point these assholes have to pay the cost of the tickets they bought America, or they're going to be running the place and the rest of us will be serving them for the rest of our lives.
    

Sunday Long Read: Sixteen, Going On Billions

Our Sunday Long Read this week is ESPN's Wright Thompson and his profile of legendary NFL quarterback Joe Montana and the star athlete's turn to his life after football. Most NFL stars end up on the motivational speaker circuit, or selling cars at a constellation of dealerships that they own, but that was never going to be enough for Broadway Joe as he's gone from running San Francisco's greatest sports era to now helming of one of Silicon Valley's biggest tech venture capital firms.

MONTANA COMES INTO his San Francisco office waving around a box of doughnuts he picked up at a hole in the wall he loves. He's got on Chuck Taylors and a fly-fishing T-shirt.

"... so chocolate, regular and maple crumb," he says.

It's a big day for his venture capital firm and nothing spreads cheer like an open box of doughnuts. He looks inside and chooses.

"Maple."

It's a tiny office, stark, with mostly empty shelves, a place rigged for work. There's a signed John Candy photo a client sent him -- a nod to a famous moment in his old life -- leaning against the wall. Four Super Bowl rings buy him very little this morning on the last day of the Y Combinator -- a kind of blind date Silicon Valley prom that puts a highly curated group of 400 founders in front of a thousand or so top investors. Each founder gets about a minute and a half to two minutes to pitch investors like Joe. A company founder promises to, say, fully automate the packing process, reducing manual labor from days to hours, a market opportunity of $10 billion. You can hear the nerves in their voices as they talk into their webcam. Some clearly haven't slept in days. Without considering my audience -- 11 plays, 92 yards, 2 minutes, 46 seconds -- I marvel at the insanity of having your entire future determined in an instant.

"I know," Montana laughs.

His company, Liquid 2, consists of multiple funds. He's got two founding partners, Michael Ma and Mike Miller. Recently he brought in his son, Nate, along with a former Notre Dame teammate of Nate's named Matt Mulvey -- which makes three Fighting Irish quarterbacks. His daughter, Elizabeth, runs the office with a velvet fist. Their first fund is a big success and contains 21 "unicorns," which is slang for a billion-dollar company. They're headed toward 10 times the original investment. Montana, it turns out, is good at this.

"You just look at the teams and the relationship of the founders," he says. "How they get along? How long they've known each other?"

We take the doughnuts and his computer down the hall to a conference room. Nate and Matt are already there.

"So that guy hasn't responded to us," Matt tells him.

That guy, Amer Baroudi, is a Rhodes scholar and a founder of a company they love. It's always a dance. Much bigger investors than Liquid 2 are also after these ideas. The guys huddle and decide that No. 16 should write him directly, politely, and tell him they're interested and would love to connect. As he does that, the companies keep presenting new ideas. Microloans in Mexico. A digital bank for African truckers. They're all on their laptops and their phones while the presentations happen on a big screen at the end of the room. His partners keep in touch on a Slack channel. Joe's handle is JCM.

One founder developed weapons for the Department of Defense. Another worked for NASA. Every other one it seems went to MIT or Cal Tech. They worked for McKinsey and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. One idea after another, pitched by passionate, interesting people. I can feel Joe vibrating with energy and excitement. He leans over Nate's shoulder with his hand on his back. He rubs his nose, then his chin, then moves his hand over his mouth in concentration. His eyes narrow.

He checks his phone and smiles.

"Amer," he says.

 

The skills Montana excelled at in the NFL are what makes him a considerable force in the world of tech's Next Big Thing. If you can make your two-minute elevator pitch to the guy who perfected the two-minute drill, then maybe what you have is worth it, and Montana's apparently a hell of a judge of character after all these years.

Always has been.

Carter Chooses To Come To A Close

Former President Jimmy Carter, 98, now says he has chosen hospice care to live out his days rather than medical attempts to prolong his life.

 

Former President Jimmy Carter is receiving hospice care at his home, the Carter Center announced Saturday. He made the decision after a series of short hospital stays, the center said in a statement.

The charity created by the 98-year-old former president said that Carter "decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention."

It said he has the full support of his medical team and family, which "asks for privacy at this time and is grateful for the concern shown by his many admirers."

In August 2015, Carter had a small cancerous mass removed from his liver. The following year, Carter announced that he needed no further treatment, as an experimental drug had eliminated any sign of cancer.

Following Saturday's announcement, Sen. Raphael Warnock, who represents Carter's home state of Georgia, called the former president "a man of great faith" who "has walked with God."

"In this tender time of transitioning, God is surely walking with him," Warnock, who is also a minister, said on Twitter. "May he, Rosalynn & the entire Carter family be comforted with that peace and surrounded by our love & prayers."

 

There's nothing wrong with the decision for palliative care, and I wish him well. Much will be discussed about Carter's term and career as America's Elder Statesman after, a role that will pass to the Big Dog soon.

I do wih he had made it to 100, and he still may, but he has more than earned his rest.

Godspeed, Jimmy.

Last Call For The Vaxx Of Life, Con't

 With the new House GOP circus of the Damned playing regularly in the Capitol and state legislatures under Republican control needed new enemies of the state to pursue, more and more anti-vax nutjobs are vowing to put doctors, public health officials, pharmaceutical executives and government scientists in prison for the crime of...well, I'm sure they'll come up with fantasies that will justify more violence and fundraising for GOP candidates heading into 2024.

As COVID cases continue to gradually decline, and with the U.S. government declaring it will end the formal public health emergency on May 11, the pandemic is, in the view of many people, receding into the rearview mirror. (This despite the fact that the disease continues to kill many people every day, especially endangering the elderly and becoming a leading cause of death for children.)

And major anti-vaccine figures are now seizing their chance to enact what they see as justice—and do a little fundraising and image-burnishing in the process. Besides Bigtree’s nonspecific legal threats, we have Children’s Health Defense, the most moneyed and influential anti-vaccine organization in the U.S., led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. CHD is often involved in strange and frequently doomed litigation, but recently, and with much fanfare, it launched a new one: an antitrust lawsuit against major news organizations and social media outlets, which they accused of conspiring to “collectively censor online news” about COVID. The defendants included frequent anti-vax targets like the Washington Post and the BBC, and the plaintiffs are a veritable who’s who of people making bogus health claims, including CHD itself; Ty and Charlene Bollinger, who run websites and sell products devoted to making bogus claims about cancer and vaccines; Jim Hoft, who founded right-wing news site Gateway Pundit, and Joseph Mercola, a longtime figure in the natural health world who’s also been a major funder of the anti-vax movement. The lawsuit made quite a bit of noise in conservative media and the anti-vaccine world—and it allowed CHD to continue asking for donations for its general litigation fund.

(As Vox recently reported, CHD got a possible advantage in the Texas judge assigned to the case: Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee who’s also in position to single-handedly outlaw medication abortion in a separate upcoming case.)

Besides the anti-trust lawsuit, Children’s Health Defense is also pledging to lobby the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of what it calls “vaccine-injured” service members. The organization is calling on its audience to help it lobby the VA to get disability benefits for service members who claim they were injured by COVID vaccines. Again, the action serves several separate purposes: to help CHD raise its public profile, to align it with the cause of veterans’ rights, and to give it the appearance of demanding some sort of corrective action from an arm of the U.S. government.

. The anti-vaccine world has also been paying a great deal of attention to a self-described former Swiss investment banker named Pascal Najadi, who claimed recently that he filed criminal charges against the current Swiss President Alain Berset, who is also the country’s former minister of health, for promoting COVID vaccines and claiming, incorrectly, that they meant you could not spread the disease. This is, more or less, like saying you’ve sued the sky for creating rain clouds, but anti-vaccine figures have been enthralled; one of them, a woman named Dr. Jane Ruby, exulted on Telegram that Najadi “may have started a worldwide c19 bioweapon investigation!” (COVID vaccines are not “bioweapons.”)

In fact, Berset does face a scandal at home. But what’s going on in Switzerland is more complicated, and not clearly connected to Najadi at all. The Swiss Parliament announced in late January that it would launch a probe into whether Berset’s former spokesperson, Peter Lauener, leaked information to Blick, a Swiss tabloid, about the country’s planned COVID measures during the height of the pandemic. Bloomberg reported that the probe will investigate, among other things, whether Berset “was trying to influence news coverage of the government’s handling of Covid-19.” (Blick has denied this took place, saying they gathered information in an independent and journalist way, adding that they “resolutely deny the accusation that we allowed ourselves to be influenced by the interior department.”) But several conspiratorial news sources, most notably Gateway Pundit, have produced a mangled version of the story, incorrectly reporting that the probe was opened due to Najadi’s complaint.

Anti-vaxxers worldwide have also falsely claimed that Pfizer vaccines have been banned in Thailand after Princess Bajrakitiyabha of the Thai royal family “fell into a coma” after a booster shot, as many social media posts have claimed. Thailand’s Department of Disease control called this “fake news” in a Facebook post, and asked citizens not to share it. (The princess collapsed in December due to what the palace said was a bacterial infection, not a booster shot; updates on her current condition haven’t been made public, but the palace said in a previous statement she’d also had a brain aneurysm.) Anti-vaccine figures on places like Telegram have nonetheless claimed that Thailand is “convening war crimes tribunals” against Pfizer, which is not how anything works.

In all, this rash of grandiose legal threats, doomed lawsuits and excitable rumors of foreign prosecutions has a lot in common with the basic shape of QAnon beliefs. It promises that justice will be served, evildoers will be dragged into the light and prosecuted, and those who doubted “the COVID narrative” will be vindicated. (Elsewhere, the former light of QAnon’s hopes and dreams, Donald Trump, has declared he will bring back public executions if he’s elected president again.)

More than anything, the people making money in the anti-vaccine world need to keep their audience’s hope, and their attention, as long as they possibly can. The false promises are yet another way to keep them in their seats.

It's all tremendously dangerous stuff that's going to get people hurt and killed.

Faren-Hate 451

The fascism in Florida under GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is getting almost comically dark, as state lawmakers want to jail publishers and strip all school funding over any book deemed "sexually explicit" in Florida classrooms.

 

Publishers could face jail time and multi-thousand-dollar fines under a new GOP-led bill that seeks to crack down on the distribution of “sexually explicit materials” to schools and educational agencies.

A bill introduced this month by Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) would amend the federal criminal code to prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing “sexually explicit material” — a term that the legislation does not clearly define — to an elementary school or high school.

Publishing houses that violate the proposed law would be subject to a maximum $500,000 fine, while individuals in the company’s higher management would face similar monetary penalties, as well as up to five years imprisonment.

Mills’s bill, a copy of which was shared with The Hill, would also withhold federal funds from elementary or secondary schools that obtain or distribute published materials that contain a “sexually explicit visual depiction of any kind,” including photographs or drawings until those materials are “relinquished or destroyed” by the school.

State and local educational agencies, including school boards or boards of education, would also be barred from providing schools with books, magazines, newspapers or e-books that contain content deemed sexually explicit.

Restrictions do not apply to materials with “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value,” according to the bill.

Mills said in a statement earlier this month that his bill is a response to what he described as a coordinated effort by Democrats to “sexualize children in schools across the U.S.”

“The battlefield for the future of our society is being fought within the classrooms of American schools,” Mills said.

“From school board meetings to new representation in local, state, and federal levels, Americans are waking up to the grim reality of woke indoctrination guised as a normal education,” he said. “No more.”

 

If this passes, I expect school libraries will be quickly emptied out as "sexually explicit" will mean whatever the fascists want it to mean, and we get into Fahrenheit 451 territory real fast here. Which is what these assholes want, for publishers to stop publishing books and for school libraries to stop having books for fear that they'll be in violation and face prison and half-mil fines.

It's ludicrous that this is even a thing, but here we are, deep in the middle of the fascist backlash against an America that dared to elect a Black president and Black VP.

Insurrection Investigation, FOX News Edition

Voting machine company Dominion Voting Services has made a massive amount of data public in their defamation case against Fox News, and Marcy Wheeler notes that Jack Smith and the DoJ have every reason to be poring over a copy.

 

As you read through Dominion’s motion for summary judgment against Fox News — and trust me, you should read it! — keep in mind not just how it proves Fox to be nothing but a propaganda platform aiming to help the Republican Party, but also the evidence it makes available to Jack Smith as he considers charges against those who used false claims about voting fraud to gin up a coup attempt.

Just as one example, Sean Hannity has played a role in every Trump legal scandal — serving as a back channel to Trump for Paul Manafort, participating in Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to gin up dirt on Hunter Biden as the first impeachment unfolded, and helping White House officials stave off the resignations of Trump’s White House Counsels in advance of January 6. But in each case, investigators only got his communications via other subjects of the investigation, as when DOJ found Manafort’s WhatsApp texts to Hannity saved in Manafort’s iCloud account or when the January 6 Committee got Signal texts Hannity exchanged with Mark Meadows from the former Chief of Staff’s production. Republicans chose not to call Hannity as a pro-Trump witness in the Ukraine impeachment.

With its filing, Dominion has given a snapshot of the ways and whys in which Fox News helped magnify false voter fraud claims, especially (though not exclusively) those of Sidney Powell.

It all takes place against the backdrop of a huge backlash against Fox after it called AZ for Joe Biden. When Fox presented the truth about the election, viewers started fleeing to Newsmax, with Trump’s encouragement. The filing describes the panic that ensued.

 

Fox News had to continually play up Trump's false voting machine fraud claims in Arizona, or the network was done.  They knew they had to lie to stay in business.

For over two years, the right wing has squealed about a media outlet prohibiting the dissemination of dodgy claims from a Murdoch outlet. It turns out that Murdoch was, in that same time period, “censoring” true facts about Trump’s dodgy claims.

I wait with bated breath for James Comer to scheduled a hearing on the “censorship.”

Tucker Carlson, especially, recognized Trump’s role in this. He warned that Trump “could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.

“What [Trump]’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”

After January 6, Tucker called Trump,”a demonic force, a destroyer.”

Fox appears to have perceived that they had to play along with Trump’s false claims or risk permanent damage to their brand.

 

They lied and deliberately cast Dominion as fraudsters, criminals, and as dangers to democracy in a massive conspiracy to "steal" the election.  They lied for months about it, and it helped lead to the January 6th terrorist insurrection.

Jack Smith now has reams of texts and communications between Fox News talking heads like Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and the Trump legal team, and it's only going to help his case.

We’ve long known that Fox was better understood as a wing of the Republican party than as a news organization (indeed, the filing describes Rupert Murdoch looking for ways to “help[] any way we can” in Georgia).

But this filing makes it clear that in a bid to cater to viewers who were fed false claims by Trump, Fox played right along with the false claims that would lead to insurrection. Jack Smith is already examining multiple parts of this effort. This filing makes evidence that would otherwise be unavailable accessible to prosecutors.

Fox News knew their platforming of Trump’s false claims was doing damage to the country. And they did it anyway.

 

Sure sounds like elements of a deliberate criminal conspiracy to overthrow the US government. That's sedition, kids. And Dominion just dropped a metric ton of evidence to help prove it.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Once again, Republicans are responding to historically bad losses in 2020 and now 2022 in states like Michigan by electing state party leaders who are vowing to overturn election results and to nullify any future Democratic candidate wins in 2024 and beyond.

Jon Smith, a local leader in rural Michigan of America First, a far-right Republican faction that denies the results of the 2020 election, wants to shift the entire party to the right - even if it means short-term losses at the ballot box. "We need to redefine what it means to be a Republican," he said in an interview.

In pursuit of that aim, Smith and other hardliners deployed armed guards to bar moderate delegates from a county meeting last August, threatening to bring criminal trespassing charges against them, according to an email to the moderates seen by Reuters.

Smith, who is running for party chair in his congressional district, also helped persuade state party officials to exclude moderates from his county from a vote on Saturday to choose the leaders who will steer Michigan Republicans into the 2024 elections.

Far-right Republican groups are making inroads across the state, according to Reuters' interviews with two dozen party leaders, grassroots members and political experts, sidelining moderate voices, risking relationships with major donors and complicating the state party's efforts to rebuild after their worst election results since 1984.

America First Republicans now control local party leadership in more than half of Michigan's 83 counties, a senior party official estimated, paving the way for an important victory on Saturday when an election denier is expected to be elected to state party chair.

Critics say the Republican Party's continued lurch to the right after midterm losses of candidates backed by former President Donald Trump could imperil its chances in a state that will likely prove critical to control of the White House and Congress in 2024, with one of Michigan's Senate seats in play.

The local skirmishes mirror Republican infighting in other swing states and in Congress, where Kevin McCarthy made important concessions to hardline lawmakers to win election as speaker of the House of Representatives last month.

"What's going on in Michigan is a microcosm of what is going on with the Republican Party nationally," said Michael Traugott, a professor at the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan.

 

Republicans trying to tie up Democratic wins in courts and/or having state legislatures overturn them is the fate of a lot of races in 2024. People don't seem to think it will happen, or that Republicans will simply lose in state courts 100% of the time as they have been so there's nothing to worry about.

One SCOTUS decision could make it painfully easy to do so.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

The Road To Gilead, Local Edition, Con't

Kentucky's Supreme Court is upholding the state's near total abortion ban laws...for now.

 

The Kentucky Supreme Court has issued a ruling that keeps the state’s two near-total bans on abortion in place and remanded the case back to the trial court for constitutional review.

Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Mitch Perrylast year blocked enforcement of the state’s “trigger law,” which bans abortion in nearly all cases, and a separate six-week ban.The state Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, allowing the abortion bans to go into effect last August.

And now, in a 150-page opinion, Supreme Court justices have upheld that decision.

The majority opinion Thursday states that Kentucky's two abortion providers lack the constitutional standing to challenge the laws on their patients' behalf, but that they do have standing to challenge the trigger ban on their own.

But justices left the door open to weigh in on the issue further, saying the ruling “does not in any way determine whether the Kentucky Constitution protects or does not protect the right to receive an abortion.”

The opinion goes on to say that nothing in the opinion “shall be construed to prevent an appropriate party from filing suit at a later date.”

Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the ACLU issued a joint statement after the ruling, saying justices “failed to protect the health and safety of nearly a million people” by refusing to block the laws.

“Even after Kentuckians overwhelmingly voted against an anti-abortion ballot measure, abortion remains banned in the state. We are extremely disappointed in today’s decision, but we will never give up the fight to restore bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom in Kentucky. This fight is not over,” the groups stated.

So I hope that the ACLU and Planned Parenthood get on the ball here and file another case.  We'll see what happens, but for now, abortion is illegal, and Republicans are doing everything in their power to criminalize it for women and doctors.

The goal is to control women as property of the GOP state, and that plan is proceeding across the country.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

A section of the Fulton County, GA Special Grand Jury findings are out as a public release, and the unredacted parts of the report make it clear, as I said earlier, that evidence of perjury in the Trump election meddling affair in Georgia's 2020 presidential contest recount is ludicrously extant.

 

A Georgia special grand jury concluded that one or more witnesses in a probe into possible election meddling by former President Donald Trump may have lied under oath, and recommended a prosecutor pursue criminal indictments in those cases.

The grand jury also said in its report that it found no significant fraud in Georgia’s 2020 presidential election, which was won by President Joe Biden.

Those conclusions were contained in the portion of the grand jury’s final report that were unsealed Thursday by a judge in Fulton County.

The sections of the report expected to reveal whether the grand jurors believed that Trump or his allies criminally interfered in Georgia’s election — and if there should be any indictments for that conduct — remain under seal.

“A majority of the Grand Jury believes that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses testifying before it,” said the report.

“The Grand Jury recommends that the District Attorney seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling,” the report said.

The grand jury voted unanimously in concluding that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election,” according to the report.

 

Perjury's just the tip of the iceberg, but the indictments will start there. Again, the big, big question is if the indictments will include Trump. The moment it does, all hell breaks loose.

 

We'll see.

Last Call For And He'll Gaetz Away With It, Con't

Following up on prosecutor recommendations, the Justice Department is officially refusing to bring charges against GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz after a nearly four-year investigation into Gaetz's alleged sexual abuse of minors and underage trafficking.

 

The Justice Department has informed lawyers for at least one witness that it will not bring charges against Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz after a years-long federal sex-trafficking investigation.

Senior officials reached out to lawyers for multiple witnesses on Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN, to inform them of the decision not to prosecute Gaetz.

The final decision was made by Department of Justice leadership after investigators recommended against charges last year.

“We have just spoken with the DOJ and have been informed that they have concluded their investigation into Congressman Gaetz and allegations related to sex trafficking and obstruction of justice and they have determined not to bring any charges against him,” Gaetz’s lawyers, Marc Mukasey and Isabelle Kirshner, said in a statement.

The congressman’s office said in a separate statement that the department informed them the investigation has ended and no charges will be brought.

The DOJ’s formal decision not to charge Gaetz, who has been serving in Congress since 2017, marks the end of a long-running investigation into allegations that the congressman violated federal law by paying for sex, including with women who were younger than 18 years old.

Gaetz has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

 

Despite a witness wo turned state's evidence against him, Merrick Garland has nothing worth bringing to trial, and so that's that.

 

Until, you know, Gaetz does the same thing again. 

It's up to voters now.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

 Me, on Ron DeSantis's war with the College Board on Monday:

 

We're maybe a month or two from DeSantis ordering state colleges and universities to no longer accept AP credits or SAT scores as valid and ordering all AP courses be banned in public schools. https://t.co/rICTk3pRAZ

— Zandar vs. The House GOP Circus Of The Damned (@ZandarVTS) February 13, 2023

 

Ron DeSantis on Tuesday:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened Tuesday to withdraw state support for Advanced Placement programs and expand other methods of awarding college credit to high school students, escalating a highly unusual clash that burst into public last month when his administration rejected plans for a new AP African American studies course.

The state education department, based on its view of preliminary documents, declared in January that the African American studies course “lacks educational value.” DeSantis (R) — citing proposed lessons on “queer theory,” “intersectionality” and other topics — criticized the plan for what he called “indoctrination” and “a political agenda.” When the College Board, which oversees AP, debuted the official course plan on Feb. 1, it provoked a debate over whether it had watered down the content to mollify DeSantis and his conservative allies. The College Board fiercely denied that claim and said on Saturday that DeSantis had slandered its course.

In Jacksonville on Tuesday, DeSantis suggested at a news conference that the state could curtail the role of all AP classes in Florida schools — not just the one in African American studies.

“AP is kind of with the College Board,” DeSantis said. “Who elected them? Are there other people that provide services? Turns out there are.” He cited the International Baccalaureate and Cambridge Assessment programs as alternatives that — like AP — enable students to qualify for college credit after passing an exam. He also plugged dual enrollment programs that let high school students take classes from professors at nearby colleges.

DeSantis said he supports opportunities for high school students to earn college credit. “Does it have to be done by the College Board?” he asked. “Or can we utilize some of these other providers who I think have a really, really strong track record?” He added: “It’s not clear to me that this particular operator” — referring to the College Board — “is the one that’s going to need to be used in the future.”

The College Board did not immediately respond to an email request for comment. A DeSantis spokesman said the administration is “reviewing options.”

As a practical matter, it is unclear whether or how AP could be eliminated in Florida. The program, with more than three dozen courses in math, science, social sciences, humanities, languages and other topics, is deeply entrenched in the state and nationwide.

 

Florida students aren't going to be allowed to take AP courses or the SAT, and neither will be accepted from other states at Florida schools. DeSantis will turn the Sunshine state into the Dullard State, and then do the same for the rest of the country.

Watch.

The Road To Gilead, Local Edition

After Kentucky voters refused to eliminate abortion in the state's constitution in November, the KY GOP, with its overwhelming supermajorities in the state House and Senate, are now looking to criminalize abortion as murder and will seek to send women and doctors to prison.

 

A Kentucky Republican lawmaker has introduced legislation that would let the state prosecute a person who gets an illegal abortion for criminal homicide, making it the latest state to try and clamp down on reproductive access in direct opposition to the will of the people.

Since the fall of Roe v. Wade, abortion is banned in Kentucky except to save the life of the pregnant person, meaning any abortion due to rape, incest, or just personal choice is illegal. The current law, though, does state that someone who receives an illegal abortion cannot be subjected to “any criminal conviction and penalty.”

The new bill, introduced Tuesday by Republican State Representative Emily Callaway, strips away that protection. The legislation would amend the current law to establish that life begins at fertilization, therefore all fetuses are owed the same protections as a living human.

“Unless specifically provided otherwise, in prosecution under this chapter where the victim is an unborn child, enforcement shall be subject to the same legal principles as would apply to the homicide of a person who had been born alive,” the text says.

The bill does make exceptions for “lawful” medical procedures carried out to save the pregnant person’s life. It also protects against prosecution for a medical procedure that results in a “natural or accidental” miscarriage.

The bill comes just a few months after Kentucky residents voted in the midterms against an amendment that would have said abortion is not a protected right in the state.

Heather Gatnarek, the ACLU of Kentucky’s senior staff attorney, slammed the new legislation as “absurd and offensive and dangerous.”

“It’s just so far afield from what we know Kentuckians want and what they need,” she told The Courier Journal. “We know people still need access to abortions.”

 

The double whammy here, with the "life begins at fertilization" nonsense combined with defining "illegal abortions" as murder, means under this bill no doctor or any medical provider would ever perform a life-saving abortion because of the risk it would be prosecuted anyway.

 

Medical abortions in the state would immediately mean felony murder charges for both providers of medication and for women under this radical garbage fire of a bill, too.

It's a ludicrous bill, but this is where I've been saying states were going with this since Roe v Wade was destroyed. You'd better believe the KYGA has enough votes to pass this.

Keep an eye on Kentucky.

Last Call For Elon-Gated Musk-Rat

Yes, Elon Musk told his engineers to reconfigure Twitter's "For You" feed algorithm to basically include all of billionaire owner Elon Musk's tweets, because it's his $44 billion toy and there's nothing you can do about it, you loser who doesn't have $44 billion.

Late Sunday night, Musk addressed his team in-person. Roughly 80 people were pulled in to work on the project, which had quickly become priority number one at the company. Employees worked through the night investigating various hypotheses about why Musk’s tweets weren’t reaching as many people as he thought they should and testing out possible solutions.

One possibility, engineers said, was that Musk’s reach might have been reduced because he’d been blocked and muted by so many people in recent months. Even before the events of this weekend, Musk’s long stint as Twitter’s main character, both in the run-up to and aftermath of his $44 billion takeover of the company, had led huge numbers of people to filter him out of their feeds.

But there were also legitimate technical reasons the CEO’s tweets weren’t performing. Twitter’s system has historically promoted tweets from users whose posts perform better to both followers and non-followers in the For You Tab; Musk’s tweets should have fit that model but showed up less only about half the time that some engineers thought they should, according to some internal estimates.

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his tweets will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

Internally, this is called a “power user multiplier,” although it only applies to Elon Musk, we’re told. The code also allows Musk’s account to bypass Twitter heuristics that would otherwise prevent a single account from flooding the core ranked feed, now known as “For You.”

That explains why people opening the app Monday found that Musk dominated the feed, with a dozen or more Musk tweets and replies visible to anyone who followed him and millions more who did not. Over 90 percent of Musk’s followers now see his tweets, according to one internal estimate.

Musk acknowledged his bombardment of the timeline on Tuesday afternoon, posting a version of the popular “forced to drink milk” meme in which one woman labeled “Elon’s tweets” forcibly bottle-feeds another woman labeled “Twitter” while pulling her hair back.

 

Joshua, the AI in "WarGames", was right all along some 40 years ago.

Goodbye, Ms. DiFi

It was inevitable considering she'd be in her 90s, but California Dem Sen. Dianne Feinstein is retiring in 2024. leaving a wide-open race to succeed her.

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., will retire from Congress at the end of 2024 after three decades in the Senate and over 50 years in public office, she announced Tuesday.

"I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024 but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends," Feinstein said in a statement.

Feinstein, 89, is the oldest sitting senator and the longest-serving senator from her state, having first been elected to the Senate in 1992. She had been under pressure for years from other Democrats in the state to make room for a younger generation of lawmakers. She had also declined the role in the new Congress of president pro tempore, which has traditionally gone to the senior member of the majority party since the mid-20th century.

Her retirement also opens up her Senate seat from California for the first time in decades. A number of House Democrats have either announced 2024 campaign bids for the seat, including Reps. Katie Porter and Adam Schiff. Rep. Barbara Lee also plans to announce a Senate run by the end of the month, a source familiar with the situation confirmed.

Feinstein has worked under five presidential administrations and alongside the two presidents who also served with her in the Senate: Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

Biden lauded Feinstein in a statement Tuesday as "a passionate defender of civil liberties and a strong voice for national security policies that keep us safe while honoring our values."

"I’ve served with more U.S. Senators than just about anyone," he said. "I can honestly say that Dianne Feinstein is one of the very best. I look forward to continuing to work with her as she serves out her term."

Feinstein said in her statement that she remains focused on passing legislation to address gun violence, promote economic growth and preserve U.S. lands in her remaining time as a senator. Feinstein said she’s confident Democrats can achieve those goals because of their previous work.

“Even with a divided Congress, we can still pass bills that will improve lives,” she said. “Each of us was sent here to solve problems. That’s what I’ve done for the last 30 years, and that’s what I plan to do for the next two years.”

 

Already we have three California Dems vying for her seat, and I guarantee you that there will be more. We'll see who steps up.

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, Con't

Special Counsel Jack Smith is definitely signaling that crimes have been committed in Trump's classified document scandal, straight out asking a federal judge to nullify attorney-client privilege between Trump and one of his lawyers, Evan Corcoran, because of evidence of commission of a criminal act.

 

Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents are seeking to pierce assertions of attorney-client privilege and compel one of his lawyers to answer more questions before a grand jury, according to two people familiar with the matter, adding an aggressive new dimension to the inquiry and underscoring the legal peril facing Mr. Trump.

The prosecutors have sought approval from a federal judge to invoke what is known as the crime-fraud exception, which allows them to work around attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime. The fact that prosecutors invoked the exception in a sealed motion to compel the testimony of the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, suggests that they believe Mr. Trump or his allies might have used Mr. Corcoran’s services in that way.

Among the questions that the Justice Department has been examining since last year is whether Mr. Trump or his associates obstructed justice in failing to comply with demands to return a trove of government material he took with him from the White House upon leaving office, including hundreds of documents with classified markings.

Last May, the Justice Department issued a subpoena for any classified documents still in Mr. Trump’s possession, after he had voluntarily turned over an initial batch of material to the National Archives that turned out to include almost 200 classified documents. In June, Mr. Corcoran met with investigators and handed over more than 30 documents in response to the subpoena.

Another lawyer for Mr. Trump, Christina Bobb, then signed a statement asserting that a “diligent search” had been conducted at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence and private club in Palm Beach, Fla., and that there were no additional documents bearing classification markings. Ms. Bobb has told investigators and others that Mr. Corcoran drafted the statement, and that she added some caveats to it, seeking to make it sound less ironclad.

But when the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago in August, agents found more than 100 additional classified documents. The affidavit submitted by the Justice Department to obtain the search warrant said that there was “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction” would be found in the search.

Mr. Corcoran recently appeared before a grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington and is believed to have asserted attorney-client privilege on behalf of Mr. Trump in refusing to answer certain questions related to his representation in the documents investigation, according to three people familiar with the matter.

 

It's the clearest sign yet that federal charges are coming. Whether any will be leveled against Trump himself, well, it certainly seems like it.

 

Again, the case Smith has to bring, and Merrick Garland has to sign off on, has to be perfect. And even if it is perfect, all Trump needs is one MAGA asshole to acquit him...or just one juror bought off or extorted into a not guilty verdict. 

We'll see.