Last Call For Batboy: The Dark Money Rises (And Falls)

Normally late August in a midterm election year is where the minority party revs up to take multiple Senate seats from a party where the opposing party's President is unpopular, salivating over big gains in the upper chamber.

This year, however, the Senate GOP's campaign arm, the NRSC, is in a complete tailspin, having already burned through most of its cash and now behind in several races they thought were shoo-ins just two-months ago. 

The recriminations and finger-pointing are already underway, and the biggest target is Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott, the NRSC's current chair and moderately eldritch comic book villain whose biggest contribution to America so far has been his record of being the largest Medicare fraudster in US history at the time in 1999.

Republican Senate hopefuls are getting crushed on airwaves across the country while their national campaign fund is pulling ads and running low on cash — leading some campaign advisers to ask where all the money went and to demand an audit of the committee’s finances, according to Republican strategists involved in the discussions.

In a highly unusual move, the National Republican Senatorial Committee this week canceled bookings worth about $10 million, including in the critical states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Arizona. A spokesman said the NRSC is not abandoning those races but prioritizing ad spots that are shared with campaigns and benefit from discounted rates. Still, the cancellations forfeit cheaper prices that came from booking early, and better budgeting could have covered both.

“The fact that they canceled these reservations was a huge problem — you can’t get them back,” said one Senate Republican strategist, who like others spokes on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters. “You can’t win elections if you don’t have money to run ads.”

The NRSC’s retreat came after months of touting record fundraising, topping $173 million so far this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission disclosures. But the committee has burned through nearly all of it, with the NRSC’s cash on hand dwindling to $28.4 million by the end of June.

As of that month, the committee disclosed spending just $23 million on ads, with more than $21 million going into text messages and more than $12 million to American Express credit card payments, whose ultimate purpose isn’t clear from the filings. The committee also spent at least $13 million on consultants, $9 million on debt payments and more than $7.9 million renting mailing lists, campaign finance data show.

“If they were a corporation, the CEO would be fired and investigated,” said a national Republican consultant working on Senate races. “The way this money has been burned, there needs to be an audit or investigation because we’re not gonna take the Senate now and this money has been squandered. It’s a rip-off.”

The NRSC’s chairman, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, has already taken heat from fellow Republicans for running ads featuring him on camera and releasing his own policy agenda that became a Democratic punching bag — leading to jokes that “NRSC” stood for “National Rick Scott Committee” in a bid to fuel his own presumed presidential ambitions.

Other spending decisions, such as putting about $1 million total into reliably blue Colorado and Washington earlier this month sparked fresh questions after the committee turned around and canceled buys in core battlegrounds.

The NRSC invested heavily in expanding its digital fundraising and building up its database of small-dollar donors. But online giving to Republicans, not just the NRSC, sagged earlier this year from what consultants said was a combination of inflation, changes to Facebook advertising policies, concerns about emails caught in spam filters, and complacency with an anticipated Republican wave. Some Republicans also suspect former president Donald Trump’s relentless fundraising pitches and cash hoarding has exhausted the party’s online donor base.

 

Democrats are doing everything right currently in order to keep the Senate, and the Senate GOP is doing everything they can to help them. It's not just that Dr. Oz, Herschel Walker, Blake Masters and J.D. Vance are terrible candidates, they are abysmal ones. But the NRSC has no money to help them, just when they need to be doing so.

Now, it's still a tough road to keeping the Senate as there's plenty of dark money out there to help GOP candidates across the country and that's starting to kick in in earnest with under three months to go. But if this keeps up, Dems are going to not only pull this off, they may actually gain a seat or three.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Simon Rosenberg at liberal think tank NDN finds that even right-wing 2022 polls are showing a significant shift towards the Democrats over the last two months.

This data is from their polls - Dems with big generic leads and/or big movement towards Democrats. This is what they are seeing, and this is why McConnell and others are now admitting we are in an entirely new election. Because we are.

The 2.3 point Dem lead in our post-Roe average is significant for it's believed that Democrats will need at least a 2 point national win to keep the House. A new TargetSmart report finds big increases in women registering to vote since the end of Roe.

All this data suggests that the Democrats have a bit of wind at their back and a real shot at keeping both chambers this fall. Senate polling remains very strong for Democrats, as our candidates in AZ, GA, NH and NV continue to lead in every poll taken in these states. Republicans Oz in PA and Johnson in WI have-lose-their-election kind of numbers. Vance continues to trail in OH in most polls, and while Dems are not ahead in FL and NC neither Republican is at 50. A new WI poll has Barnes up 51-44 over Ron Johnson.

In retrospect, the big Dem overperformance in the NE House special on June 28th appears to have been a harbinger that a new, bluer election was at hand, and should not have been treated as some weird outlier. It was after all actual voters voting, not a poll. Same goes for the stunning results from Kansas and another big overperformance in the MN-1 House special this past week. Three key elections with actual voters, three big overperformances by anti-extremist electorates, two in very red states.

The new climate and health care reconciliation bill should be a big boost to Democrats. It will make our closing argument stronger; lift Joe Biden's approval rating; bring the party together for the home stretch; and give us a powerful tool to reach young voters who are overwhelming Democratic but also are the most likely not to vote this year. It would be as Joe Biden likes to say "a big fucking deal." Republicans, on the other hand, are closing this election out in ways which give new meaning to dumpster fire.

Our current 2022 election toplines: The race has moved 4-5 points towards Democrats in recent weeks. The anti-MAGA majority has been awakened

• Dems have significantly overperformed expectations in 3 post Roe elections – NE and MN House specials, Kansas ballot initiative
• The Senate is leaning Dem, chances of keeping the House rising
• Lots of signs of GOP underperformance now, and the landscape is likely to get worse for GOP in coming months
• Democratic candidates have a huge cash advantage heading into the final 4 months

In November of 2021, we published a memo, Memo: 3 Reasons Why 2022 Won’t Be 2010, that posited the GOP's embrace of MAGA would make it likely that 2022 would not be a traditional midterm and Democrats could end up overperforming expectations. In May we predicted that the combination of a return of mass shootings, the ending of Roe, and the fallout from the Jan 6th Committee would reawaken the anti-MAGA majority and make this election much closer than many thought possible. In mid-June, we released an election analysis which argued we were already looking at a competitive not a wave election - that there were signs of what we call the MAGA hangover (GOP underperformance) even before Roe ended. Then Roe ended, and NDN has been at the national forefront of charting what is now clearly a new, bluer election.

 

This may be a very rosy prediction for Team Blue, and I won't be convinced until Dems win enough House seats that the inevitable efforts by the GOP to try to annul elections in order to steal the House and maybe the Senate fail, but Dems are doing what they need to be doing in order to set up wins, and Republicans are not.

 

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

The Drop Trou Now Ladies Party

What a shocker that everyone who warned that Republican states banning transgender women and girls from sports would be used against all girls and women in sports were correct all along.

After one competitor “outclassed” the rest of the field in a girls’ state-level competition last year, the parents of the competitors who placed second and third lodged a complaint with the Utah High School Activities Association calling into question the winner’s gender.

David Spatafore, the UHSAA’s legislative representative, addressing the Utah Legislature’s Education Interim Committee on Wednesday, said the association — without informing the student or family members about the inquiry — asked the student’s school to investigate.

The school examined the students’ enrollment records.

“The school went back to kindergarten and she’d always been a female,” he said.

To protect the student’s identity, Spatafore said he would not reveal the sport, the classification of play nor the school the student attended.

He told committee members about the events in response to their questions of whether the UHSAA, which sanctions and oversees high school activities, receives such complaints and how they are handled.

Spatafore said the association has received other complaints, some that said “that female athlete doesn’t look feminine enough.”

The association took “every one of those complaints seriously. We followed up on all of those complaints with the school and the school system,” he said during an update on HB11, a ban on transgender girls from participating in female school sports, which was passed during the final hours of 2022 General Session.

“We didn’t get to the parents or the student simply because if all of the questions about eligibility were answered by the school or the feeder system schools, there was no reason to make it a personal situation with a family or that athlete.”

The legislation, sponsored by Rep. Kera Birkeland, R-Morgan, bans transgender girls from competing in girls sports. In the event of a lawsuit, however, the bill defaults to a commission that would evaluate transgender students’ eligibility to play.

 

So now millions of girls live in states where if they don't meet "standards of femininity" and they are excellent athletes, they will be accused of being transgender and have their bodies investigated again and again to "prove they are women".

 

And millions of voters in these states are not only okay with this, they think it's 100% necessary in order to "protect girls". Note that the event happened last year, before the law was passed. We had parents so hateful that they went back to accuse a girl of breaking a law last year in order to use it against her.

 

We must beat the mantra of second-class citizenship early into women, that their bodies are uniquely subject to the state's whims, so they get used to the idea that states can mandate what those bodies are to be used for.

This is the GOP present and future.

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

Florida GOP Gov. Ron Desantis's election police are doing exactly what I said he would do with them: turning them into his personal election Gestapo to terrorize Black and brown voters in the state.

 

In a made-for-TV spectacle Thursday focused on the work of his new “election crimes” state law enforcement office, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared that 20 out of 11.1 million votes cast in the 2020 election in the state had been submitted by people allegedly voting illegally.

The event included all of the necessary law-and-order dress-up: Held in the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, DeSantis spoke in front of a wall of uniformed law enforcement officers and behind a podium labeled “ELECTION INTEGRITY.”

The governor’s remarks were punctuated by the cheers of an audience in the courtroom’s jury box and public gallery, which held up signs, distributed minutes earlier, that read “MY VOTE COUNTS.”

The Washington Post reported that a volunteer with the Palm Beach County Republican Party monitored who entered the room, and that the Democratic vice mayor of Fort Lauderdale — where the event was held – was denied entry.

Joe Scott, Broward County’s supervisor of elections, told The Miami Herald his office hadn’t received any advanced notice on the substance of the press event; rumors swirled ahead of time that DeSantis was coming down to announce Scott’s suspension.

“They were very mysterious about it, with everybody. Nobody really knew what it was about,” Scott told the Herald. “You’re making an election-related announcement in my backyard, and they didn’t tell me anything about it.”

During Thursday’s event, Peter Antonacci, the DeSantis-appointed director of the Election Crimes office, claimed without evidence that illegal voting may have swayed a 2021 special congressional election — though the race he referred to was a Democratic primary in a single congressional district, not a statewide general election.

“You may think that 20 voters is not a lot. But you’re in Broward County and you know that you just elected a person to Congress here this year by five votes,” Antonacci said, adding: “I’m certain that in that tranche of voters, there were plenty of illegal ballots cast, and it is just awfully unfair to the supporters of political candidates, to the candidates and to the public at large.”

DeSantis didn’t go into detail about the alleged offenders, except to say that they had at some point been convicted of either murder or sexual assault, and then, at some time after that, “they went ahead and voted anyways.”

People with those convictions aren’t eligible to have their voting rights restored in Florida. But, as the Herald noted, the Florida Division of Elections is required to inform county supervisors of their findings of voter eligibility, and it’s not clear whether that occurred in these cases.

Though DeSantis said 20 people were being charged, a press release listed only 17 people, most in their 50s or 60s: The other three, Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokesperson Gretl Plessinger told TPM, have not yet been taken into custody.

It’s not clear yet, because Plessinger did not make charging documents available, how much the defendants knew about their alleged criminal activity; in another recent case of alleged election crimes in Florida, an Alachua County election official registered several people in government custody to vote even though they were allegedly not eligible. The election official was cleared of wrongdoing, while the incarcerated would-be voters now face charges.

“They actually helped us fill out the voter rights registration forms,” one of the defendants in that case, John Rivers, told Fresh Take Florida. “They came in and recruited us to vote, and then you know, told us that we could vote and now they’re charging us for voting.”

“I don’t understand how I can be charged with voter misconduct,” said another defendant, Dedrick De’Ron Baldwin. “All I was doing was what they told me I had a right to do.”

On Thursday, DeSantis said the 20 voters he announced were facing charges had committed “election fraud.” But the Florida Department of Law Enforcement press release actually listed two alleged violations: “false affirmation – voting or elections,” and “voting as an unqualified elector,” both third-degree felonies.

More important than the details of the alleged violations, apparently, was praising Ron DeSantis. Ashley Moody, Florida’s attorney general, commended “our very detail-oriented governor.” And DeSantis himself paused at one point to note the source of all the hubbub.

“This was my idea!” the governor exclaimed.

 

So they hunted down people with prior convictions and will almost certainly send them back to state prison for decades, even though they had served their time and even worse, they were told they were allowed to vote by state voting officials and registered by them.

Three Orange County residents with felony convictions accused by Florida’s new elections police force of illegally voting told agents they believed their civil rights had been restored before they cast ballots in 2020, according to affidavits released Friday.

“They did not go through any process. They did not get their voting rights restored, and yet they went ahead and voted anyway,” DeSantis said at the news conference. “That is against the law and now they will pay the price.”

But state Sen. Jeff Brandes, who wrote the bill implementing Amendment 4, said it was lawmakers’ intent that ineligible people would be “granted some grace” by the state if they registered to vote without the intent to commit fraud.

“Some of the individuals did check with [Supervisors of Elections] and believed they could register,” the St. Petersburg Republican said on Twitter.

The three Orange residents accused of voter fraud told investigators they thought they could vote and had received voter ID cards, according to affidavits. All of them affirmed on voting applications that their rights had been restored.

Stribling, who was convicted of second-degree murder in 1993, told an agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that she had “served her time in prison and was no longer a convicted felon,” an affidavit said. She also said she believed that her rights were restored at a clemency hearing but could not provide paperwork backing that up.

“Stribling believed that her rights were restored because she completed the voter registration application and received a voter registration card,” Special Agent Ryan Bliss wrote in the affidavit. “[Special Agent] McGinley asked Stribling if she had the right to own a firearm restored and Stribling answered in the negative because she is a felon.”

Washington, who was convicted of attempted sexual battery, told agents a probation officer told him that his civil rights would be “automatically restored upon his release from prison,” according to another affidavit.

 

Given the Byzantine mess that Florida's system to restore voting eligibility for released felons requires, a system that demands thousands of dollars in court fees and no way to track down exactly how much people owe, it's a system ripe for criminal justice abuse. DeSantis of course will ride it all the way to higher office if he gets the chance.

These folks were victimized by the system, and Ron DeSantis wants to crucify them on his hill of "voter integrity".

Absolute bastard of a man.

The Return Of The Revenge Of Mueller Time

Meanwhile, in other Trump legal catastrophe news:

A federal appeals court has ordered the release of a secret Justice Department memo discussing whether President Donald Trump obstructed the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The unanimous panel decision issued Friday echoes that of a lower court judge, Amy Berman Jackson, who last year accused the Justice Department of dishonesty in its justifications for keeping the memo hidden.

Department officials argued that the document was protected because it concerned internal deliberations over whether to charge Trump with obstructing special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of the 2016 Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia. But the judges agreed with Jackson that the record clearly showed that Mueller had already concluded that a sitting president could not be charged with a crime.

Instead, the panel ruled, the March 2019 memorandum concerned what then-attorney general William P. Barr would say to Congress in advance of the Mueller report’s release about the evidence of obstruction.

“A charging decision concededly was off the table and the agency failed to invoke an alternative rationale that might well have justified its invocation of the privilege,” the judges wrote.

The court said that if the government had accurately described to Jackson the motivations behind the memo, the ruling might be different. But “any notion that the memorandum concerned whether to say something to the public went entirely unargued — and even unmentioned” until the appeal.

Barr ultimately told lawmakers that since Mueller had declined to reach a conclusion, he and his deputy made their own determination that the evidence was lacking. When the full report was released weeks later, it said there was “substantial evidence” that Trump obstructed justice.

The memo was written by two senior Justice Department officials who argued that the evidence gathered by Mueller’s team did not rise to the level of a prosecutable case, even if Trump were not president. A redacted version was released last year but left under seal the actual analysis of that question.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the nonprofit that sued for the document’s release, celebrated the ruling on Twitter.

“We’re going to get the secret memo Barr used to undercut the Mueller Report and claim it was insufficient to find Trump obstructed justice,” the ethics watchdog wrote. “And we’re going to make it public.”

 

The Justice Department I guess kind of thought this would go away, and it's entirely possible that the DoJ might actually not appeal the ruling now that it has become pretty clear that Donald Trump will be indicted by at least one of the four investigations into his criminality: the Georgia election interference, the Manhattan Trump Organization tax fraud, the Mar-a-Lago document mess, and the NY state Trump property civil case.

On the other hand, the DoJ may have to sit on it given the ongoing investigations. 

We'll see where this goes, but the DoJ is going to have to act quickly either way, or CREW will be able to make the Barr memo on the Mueller report public.

Black Lives Still Matter, Redlined Edition

Racism has been a tax on Blackness in America for centuries, and even with laws supposedly protecting us, being Black in America always has an unspoken and very real price.

Last summer, Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, welcomed an appraiser into their house in Baltimore, hoping to take advantage of historically low interest rates and refinance their mortgage.

They believed that their house — improved with a new $5,000 tankless water heater and $35,000 in other renovations — was worth much more than the $450,000 that they paid for it in 2017. Home prices have been on the rise nationwide since the pandemic; in Baltimore, they have gone up 42 percent in the past five years, according to Zillow.com.

But 20/20 Valuations, a Maryland appraisal company, put the home’s value at $472,000, and in turn, loanDepot, a mortgage lender, denied the couple a refinance loan.

Dr. Connolly said he knew why: He, his wife and three children, aged 15, 12 and 9, are Black. A professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Connolly is an expert on redlining and the legacy of white supremacy in American cities, and much of his research focuses on the role of race in the housing market.

Months after that first appraisal, the couple applied for another refinance loan, removed family photos and had a white male colleague — another Johns Hopkins professor — stand in for them. The second appraiser valued the house at $750,000.

This week, Dr. Connolly and Dr. Mott sued loanDepot, which is based in Foothill Ranch, Calif., as well as 20/20 Valuations and Shane Lanham, the owner of 20/20 Valuations. Mr. Lanham is the appraiser who conducted the first appraisal.

“We were clearly aware of appraisal discrimination,” said Dr. Connolly, 44. “But to be told in so many words that our presence and the life we’ve built in our home brings the property value down? It’s an absolute gut punch.”

The home appraisal industry, which relies partly on subjective opinions to translate home values into dollars and cents, has faced a firestorm of criticism over the past two years.

More than 97 percent of home appraisers are white, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and since the summer of 2020, when conversations on race and discrimination in America rose to the forefront following the murder of George Floyd, dozens of Black homeowners have alleged discrimination in the home valuations they received. Some have filed lawsuits, and the Biden administration in March announced a set of planned reforms to overhaul the appraisal industry and dismantle systemic bias.

Dr. Connolly and Dr. Mott live in the North Baltimore neighborhood of Homeland, known for its strong public schools and colonial architecture, which has earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places. A majority of their neighbors are white. According to their complaint, which was filed in Maryland District Court on Monday, the couple applied to refinance their mortgage with loanDepot in May 2021. The lender approved a loan at a rate of 2.25 percent and, according to the complaint, told the couple that their home was likely now worth $550,000 or more.

 

Being Black cost this family hundreds of thousands of dollars in wealth.

 

Folks, discrimination in America isn't "I'm not going to offer you my services because you're Black." It's "I'm going to short-change you, charge you more, and give white folk better deals because you're Black."

 

The Black Tax is real. It costs us millions in a generation, billions in a lifetime, trillions over the course of America's existence.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Last Call For Here Comes The Gov, Con't

Kyle Kondik over at Sabato's Crystal Ball notes that Democrats have a long road to get back to evening up the country to go from 22 to even 25 governor's mansions this year. Even with big pickups in Maryland and Massachusetts from outgoing Republicans Larry Hogan and Charlie Baker, Dems have a lot of heavy lifting to do in order to defend seats in nearly a dozen competitive races...including Oregon.

Republican incumbents are in great shape to hold New Hampshire and Vermont. Elsewhere in New England, Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) has posted surprisingly robust approval ratings as he faces a rematch with businessman Bob Stefanowski (R). Next door, Gov. Dan McKee (D-RI) — who took over when his predecessor, Gina Raimondo (D), became Secretary of Commerce — has to get through a primary against, most notably, Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea (D) and former CVS executive Helena Foulkes (D). The primary victor is likely to face newcomer Ashley Kalus (R). If things break right for Republicans down the stretch of the election, Connecticut or Rhode Island might be like New Jersey’s race was last year — surprisingly close and competitive.

As of now, the hottest race in New England comes in Maine, where Gov. Janet Mills (D) is seeking a second term against her predecessor, former Gov. Paul LePage (R). Our understanding is that while this race remains a viable Republican target, it has not moved into true Toss-up territory yet. It definitely remains worth watching, though, as we can imagine LePage — who has been on decent behavior recently, given his typical penchant for stirring controversy — rallying the state’s large cadre of white, working-class voters to victory once again.

A key thing to watch in Pennsylvania is whether the well-heeled Republican Governors Association actually decides to spend there; as it is now, Shapiro has a ton of money to spend while Mastriano hardly has any. The Keystone State is so competitive that we would not expect Shapiro to win by the big margin that some polls show given what we still expect to be a Republican-leaning overall political environment, but it does appear that Shapiro retains the edge. The same is true of Whitmer in Michigan, which is really the only swing state that appears likely to have a statewide ballot issue on abortion this year. That issue dominating the race is just fine for Democrats, who have already highlighted GOP nominee Tudor Dixon’s (R) stringent anti-abortion stance.

As noted above, GOP incumbents DeSantis in Florida and Kemp in Georgia both appear to be ahead in their races. One very clear bright spot for Republicans is that, in our eyes, all of their incumbent governors are favored to win. Kemp is really the only one who appears locked in a legitimately close race. We’ll see if Florida comes online at some point, but the political trendlines for Democrats in that state are bad even as it remains competitive. We might as well mention Texas in this group; Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is seeking a third term against former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D, TX-16). Like Abrams in Georgia, O’Rourke gives Democrats in Texas an energetic and well-funded challenger — but also gives Republicans a useful foil to inspire their own turnout.

We may not have a strong handicap in aforementioned Wisconsin until the weekend before the election — and even then, we might not feel very confident about it. In picking businessman Tim Michels (R) as their nominee, Republicans probably rolled the dice a bit more than if they had picked former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R): Michels may have some added appeal as more of an outsider candidate, although he’s also less vetted than Kleefisch, who served a couple of terms as former Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) no. 2. Next door in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) faces former state Sen. Scott Jensen (R), a one-time moderate who moved to the right during the political battles over the pandemic. The environment will be the main determinant of how vulnerable Walz truly is.

Kansas, where Gov. Laura Kelly (D) is seeking a second term, remains the most obvious Republican pickup opportunity, if only because it is by far the reddest state that Democrats are defending. But Kelly, despite running in a clearly Republican-leaning state, is not dead in the water, and there are questions about how strong of a campaign her opponent, state Attorney General Derek Schmidt (R), is running. Kelly’s approval rating remains above water, it appears, and she may be able to thread the needle much like Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-LA) did in 2019. Edwards, like Kelly, initially won office by defeating a weak Republican opponent — Edwards beat scandal-plagued then-Sen. David Vitter (R), while Kelly beat the very right-wing Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) in 2018. Edwards then survived in 2019 against businessman Eddie Rispone (R), who was a better candidate than Vitter but was not exactly top-tier, either. Schmidt is probably comparable in candidate quality to Rispone, and that very well may be sufficient for him to win. But we thought this race might’ve drifted into clear Leans Republican territory by now, and our understanding is that it has not. Pro-abortion rights forces just won a major victory on abortion in Kansas earlier this month as voters strongly rejected a statewide ballot issue that would have given the state’s GOP legislature the power to restrict abortion rights. We do wonder if the Democratic intensity over abortion will remain in this state, or if the August vote put the issue more on the backburner for November (certainly Republicans are hoping for the latter, given the lopsided margin against their side in the vote a couple of weeks ago).

Nevada is another Toss-up defended by a Democratic incumbent, Gov. Steve Sisolak (D). Back in June, Republicans picked Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo (R) as their standard-bearer, and he was probably the best candidate running. Most of the time, one wouldn’t consider a county-level official to be all that prominent, but in Nevada — which is in some ways a city-state — Las Vegas’s Clark County casts about 2/3rds of the statewide vote. With crime an issue, Sisolak and Lombardo are trying to see whether they can blame the other. The Senate and gubernatorial races likely will run fairly closely to one another — in 2018, Sisolak won by 4 points and now-Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) won by 5 — and as we wrote a couple of weeks ago, we think Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) is the most vulnerable Democratic senator this year. If that’s the case, then it stands to reason that Sisolak is awfully vulnerable too.

We mentioned above that we are moving Oregon’s open-seat race from Leans Democratic to Toss-up. This is despite the state’s blue lean and the fact that Republicans have not won a gubernatorial race there since 1982. However, the state is hosting an unusual 3-way race among a trio of women who are all recent members of the state legislature: former state House Speaker Tina Kotek (D), former state House Minority Leader Christine Drazan (R), and former state Sen. Betsy Johnson, an unaffiliated, former Democrat who is more conservative than most of the members of her former party and who has been backed by Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The race sets up an unusual situation where the winner may not need to crack even 40%. Additionally, the 3 candidates all served concurrently in the state legislature, which should provide the campaigns ample opportunities to draw contrasts among the candidates. Outgoing Gov. Kate Brown (D) is deeply unpopular, and there may be some desire for change in the Beaver State. Johnson, the independent, would still be the most surprising winner, and Kotek and Drazan both will be working to try to prevent their voters from flocking to her banner. There’s just enough uncertainty here that we’re looking at the race as a Toss-up now.

We are not quite there yet in another western blue state, but it’s becoming clearer to us that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) is locked in what appears to be a very close contest with 2020 Senate nominee and former TV meteorologist Mark Ronchetti (R). Unlike many other Republicans, Ronchetti has tried to show some nuance on the abortion issue, and Lujan Grisham has a number of vulnerabilities, as documented by Axios’s Russell Contreras and Josh Kraushaar, that by themselves aren’t much, but could be harmful to her taken together. We still give Lujan Grisham a small edge, owing to incumbency and the state’s overall lean.

Next door, in Arizona, is another open Toss-up. Republicans have nominated a fringe candidate, former TV newscaster Kari Lake (R), who just won the GOP nomination with a backward-looking campaign over imagined voter fraud in the 2020 election. She faces Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D), who had to belatedly apologize last year over an employment discrimination controversy dating back to her time as the state Senate minority leader (a Black woman was fired from her job as a Senate aide and successfully sued over the matter). We ultimately have some questions about how well Hobbs can capitalize on Lake’s problems, making Arizona a pure Toss-up, still.

 

In other words, while Dems are going to pick up two states in MD and MA, Republicans can win ME, CT, RI, NV, OR, KS, WI, NM, MN, MI, and PA, 11 states which currently have Democratic governors. I expect all of these races to be very close, and frankly Republicans have a better chance in all 11 of these states than Dems do picking up Georgia, Florida or Texas.

We've concentrated on House and especially Senate races so far this year, but Dems absolutely need to get going on the Governor front, and now.

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

Bragging...Rights, Or, I Owe Alvin An Apology

It looks like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg got an across-the-board guilty plea deal with cooperation out of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, meaning that the now extremely guilty executive will have to testify as a star witness against the Trump Organization itself in just a few months.

 

Allen H. Weisselberg, for decades one of Donald J. Trump’s most trusted executives, has reached a deal to plead guilty on Thursday and admit to participating in a long-running tax scheme at the former president’s family business — a serious blow to the company that could heighten its risk in an upcoming trial on related charges.

Mr. Weisselberg will have to admit to all 15 felonies that prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney’s office accused him of, according to people with knowledge of the matter. And if he is called as a witness at the company’s trial in October, he will have to testify about his role in the scheme to avoid paying taxes on lavish corporate perks, the people said.

But Mr. Weisselberg will not implicate Mr. Trump or his family if he takes the stand in that trial, the people said, and he has refused to cooperate with prosecutors in their broader investigation into Mr. Trump, who has not been accused of wrongdoing.

Even so, his potential testimony will put the Trump Organization at a disadvantage and is likely to make Mr. Weisselberg a central witness at the October trial, where the company will face many of the same charges.

On cross-examination, the Trump Organization’s lawyers could accuse Mr. Weisselberg of pleading guilty only to spare himself a harsher sentence; under the terms of the plea deal, Mr. Weisselberg, who was facing up to 15 years in prison, will spend as little as 100 days behind bars. They might also argue that it would be unfair to hold the Trump Organization accountable for a crime that was not committed by the Trump family, who control the company.

But Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony — an acknowledgment from one of the Trump Organization’s top executives that he committed the crimes listed in the indictment — would undercut any effort by the company’s lawyers to contend that no crime was committed.

The indictment placed Mr. Weisselberg at the center of a conspiracy that prosecutors said allowed him to avoid paying taxes on leased Mercedes-Benzes, an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and private school tuition for his grandchildren.

Prosecutors have said other employees benefited from a similar arrangement, but no one else has been charged with a crime. Mr. Weisselberg’s testimony could help prosecutors prove their broader claims.

The prosecutors also essentially accused him of conspiring with the Trump Organization, which he will have to acknowledge at his plea hearing on Thursday and at the trial if he is called as a witness.

 

After pillorying Bragg for essentially sandbagging the Manhattan DA's office investigation into Trump itself, I have to say that I'm shocked that it now looks like Bragg may actually be able to bring charges against the Trump Organization and have the company's CFO admit in trial that there was a conspiracy to commit corporate fraud with the Trump family at the center.

 

I'm okay with admitting when I was wrong upon receiving new information, and apologizing to Bragg, even though he'll never know who I am. He knew what he was doing after all, and his office has a massive win here that will lead to serious problems for Trump, weeks before the midterms.

Take a bow, Mr. Bragg.

You got a righteous victory here.

The Big Lie, Con't

I will say this until I'm blue in the face, but if Trump election deniers win these secretary of state, attorney general and gubernatorial races races in 2022, they will absolutely wholesale nullify Democratic wins in 2024, full stop.

The Republican nominee for secretary of state in Arizona is a self-proclaimed member of the far-right extremist group the Oath Keepers who repeatedly shared anti-government conspiracies and posts about stockpiling ammunition on social media. 

CNN's KFile team uncovered previously unreported posts from Mark Finchem, an Arizona state representative who won his party's nomination with the endorsement of former President Donald Trump, on several social media websites linked from his since-deleted former Twitter account. 

The posts included a Pinterest account with a "Treason Watch List," and pins of photos of Barack Obama alongside imagery of a man clad in Nazi attire making a Nazi salute; Finchem also shared photos of the Holocaust claiming it could happen in the United States. 

The Oath Keepers, of which Finchem self-identified as a member since 2014, is an anti-government, far-right militia composed of former and active military and law enforcement that purports to defend the US Constitution. The group is perhaps best known for providing security for the January 6, 2021, "Stop the Steal" rally preceding the Capitol riot. Eleven members, including its leader, were charged by the Justice Department with "seditious conspiracy" related to the Capitol attack. 

Finchem, who attended the January 6 rally before the attack on the US Capitol but has denied he participated in the riot and has not been charged with any crimes, campaigned extensively on the false claim the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. If Finchem wins his race against Democrat Adrian Fontes, a former county clerk of Maricopa County, Arizona, Finchem would be tasked with running the state's elections in 2024. In Arizona, the secretary of state is second in line to the governorship. 

Finchem said CNN is not credible and declined to comment.

 

I still believe that in states where these jackasses already control the government, like Texas, there's a good chance that if a Democrat wins anything but the most gerrymandered races, they'll simply be annulled and awarded to the Republican. Beto O'Rourke, for example, will never be allowed to win, even if he does win. He'll be accused of massive voter fraud, the seat will be awarded to Ted Cruz, and Cruz will smile and nod and lie and gladly take it.

Watch.

Last Call For Bad Religion, Con't

The reaction by the fascist "Christian" hard right to last week's Mar-a-Lago warrant being served by the FBI is proof enough that most churches need to lose their tax-exempt status, frankly.

Right-wing Christian media kicked into high gear in the days following the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, coalescing around a defense of former President Donald Trump based on a smorgasbord of persecution complexes, whataboutism, conspiracy theories, lies, and misinformation about law enforcement and the judicial process. The Christian right and its GOP allies are counting on their base consuming a steady diet of these radio shows, podcasts, social media posts, and email blasts, tuning out any coverage that conflicts with their image of Trump as both a virile hero and a victim besieged by radical leftists at the FBI. For them, God anointed Trump, choosing an “unlikely” leader to restore Christian America. It is precisely because Trump is singularly capable of resurrecting the Christian nation, this thinking goes, that the radical leftists of the deep state want to bring him down.

On the night of the raid, Tony Perkins, president of the leading Christian right political organization the Family Research Council, tweeted, “Who trusts the FBI to pursue justice? The agency has become so politicized that even if their actions were justified half the nation still would not trust them.” The next day, Franklin Graham, scion of the evangelist Billy Graham, also stoked distrust of the FBI, invoking the 1992 standoff at the Ruby Ridge compound of the anti-government, white supremacist extremist Randy Weaver. “Last night as we watched the events that unfolded at Mar-a-Lago, I couldn’t help but think that the FBI and DOJ are losing credibility and the trust of the American people again,” Graham wrote on Facebook. He then invoked the conspiracy theory, now pervasive in right-wing circles, that new funding in the Inflation Reduction Act to boost collection of taxes owed by the wealthy was “a step in weaponizing the IRS to act against people, organizations, and businesses who have a voice of dissent against government agendas.”

A central theme of the Christian right’s coverage is that the raid was politically motivated to stop Trump from running for president again in 2024, and to dampen his influence in the 2022 midterms. “Was it driven by politics or national security? Why did we not see the same with Hillary Clinton?” asked Perkins on his radio program, Washington Watch, on August 12, the day after Attorney General Merrick Garland publicly explained the legal process by which the search warrant was obtained and executed. Just the fact that Clinton’s home was never the subject of a search warrant — never mind whether there was any basis to seek or obtain one — was evidence enough that Trump had received unequal treatment.

Perkins even lauded the Trump administration for not investigating Clinton because “they didn’t want to create a political circus like we see happening right now.” (Trump, of course, is well-known for not creating political circuses, and for his magnanimous treatment of Hillary Clinton.) Perkins went on to say that Clinton “was not paraded out in handcuffs,” a verbal sleight of hand that suggested (falsely) that Trump was. (He was not even present at Mar-a-Lago the night of the raid.) Then Perkins waved off the ubiquitous “lock her up” chants at Trump rallies, and said, “I don’t even think many conservatives would want political leaders, even of the other side, mistreated, or treated in such a fashion that shakes our very concept of justice and dignity in this country.”

Themes of war — actual and spiritual — abounded, a call to arms for Trump’s Christian followers who are being primed to believe that just as law enforcement came after Trump, it will come after them. Eric Metaxas, a popular evangelical author, Trump promoter, and radio host, called the FBI “thugs.” He interviewed Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing campus group Turning Point USA and also a rising star in the evangelical world, who declared the raid a “rubicon” moment for the left. “It wasn’t a raid, it was a military occupation,” Kirk told Metaxas, adding “I looked at it as a political invasion. I looked at it as they invaded us.” Stephen Strang, an influential evangelical publisher and author of four laudatory books about Trump, wrote, “I believe God raised up Donald Trump and there is warfare going on — satanic activity that is trying to tear down the fabric of this country.” He urged “Americans who are concerned about religious freedom and the threat of communist agendas to this country” to “stand up and voice their support for President Trump.”

 

Again, all this is in service to a pig of a human being. The imagery of Christian soldiers killing the unclean to conquer America and make it into a Christian fascist theocracy is not just a recruiting tool, armed religious fascism is the actual plan.

 

This toxic brew of conspiracy theories, incendiary language, and veneration of Trump is likely to only get uglier and more dangerous as this and other investigations of Trump progress. Christian right figures are repeating Trump’s claim that FBI agents searched his wife Melania’s closet, feeding right-wing paranoias that the “deep state” is filled with sexual deviants. On one side is Trump, whom God anointed. On the other are creepy thugs who rummage through his wife’s intimate belongings.

Kirk, in particular, effectively sanctified Mar-a-Lago as an untouchable holy place, one that the base would fight to defend. “You want a rallying cry?” he asked Metaxas. “They occupied Mar-a-Lago!” The resort, Kirk went on, is “not just the president’s home. It’s a piece of presidential history. It’s the place where treaties were signed and important meetings happened. They desecrated a core point of American history, for what? For Melania’s shawl? Or to spend an hour in her closet?”

Kirk, though, thinks he has a solution: lawless revenge. “State attorneys general that are Republican have to authorize raids against Soros groups, BLM, Planned Parenthood, the alphabet mafia, groomers, chemical castration of children, now,” he said. (“Alphabet mafia” is a right-wing slur for the LGBTQ movement, and “chemical castration” maligns gender-affirming care for trans kids.) He told Metaxas he has texted state attorneys general that he knows, including Texas’ Ken Paxton and Lousiana’s Jeff Landry, to encourage them to execute their own raids on such organizations as retaliation, even if they did not expect to make any arrests.

In this upside-down world, Trump is sanctified and besieged, and everyone else is getting away with unspeakable crimes. If the past week’s worth of Christian right media coverage of the Mar-a-Lago raid is any indication, we should expect ongoing, escalating attacks on anyone perceived to be an enemy of God’s anointed, persecuted president.

 

So yeah, when indictments are announced, I would absolutely expect lethal violence across the country as a result. People will fight, kill, and die in Trump's name.

 

The only question is how many they take down with them.

Water Logged On The Colorado

For the second year in a row, Western states will have to make significant cuts to water usage as the Colorado River and the Lake Mead reservoir has now reached Level 2 water shortage status.

 

The drought in the Colorado River basin is reaching "a tipping point," Camille Calimlim Touton, the Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner, said. Her remarks come as the bureau announced its forecast for the water system in the West at a time when the region is experiencing a multi-year megadrought made worse by the climate crisis.

Touton said the Colorado River basin is in its 23rd year of a "historic drought." This year's forecast prompted the bureau to declare a Tier 2 water shortage on the Colorado River — forcing several Southwest states to make mandatory water cuts for the second year in a row.

The commissioner said Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the country's two largest reservoirs — are also at "historically low levels."

“The system is approaching a tipping point and without action we cannot protect the system and the millions of Americans who rely on this resource," Touton said.

By taking conservation actions, like water cuts, she said the bureau needs to ensure communities, tribal nations and the environment are sustained, not just next year but for the future

"Protecting the system means protecting the people of the American West," she said.

 

There's no reason to believe things are going to get better anytime soon, environmentally or politically.

According to a new projection from the Department of the Interior, Lake Mead’s water level will be below 1,050 feet above sea level come January — the threshold required to declare a Tier 2 shortage starting in 2023.

Lake Mead’s level has been around 1,040 feet this summer, just 27% of its full capacity.

The Tier 2 shortage means Arizona, Nevada and Mexico will have to further reduce their Colorado River use beginning in January. California will not have cuts made to to their Colorado River yet. (The threshold for California’s first cut is 1,045 feet in January.)

Of the impacted states, Arizona will face the largest cuts — 592,000 acre-feet — or about 21% of the state’s yearly allotment of river water.

“Every sector in every state has a responsibility to ensure that water is used with maximum efficiency. In order to avoid a catastrophic collapse of the Colorado River System and a future of uncertainty and conflict, water use in the Basin must be reduced,” Interior’s assistant secretary for water and science Tanya Trujillo said in a statement.

Interior’s projections show that by January of next year, Lake Mead’s water surface elevations will be at 1,047.61 feet. Meanwhile, Lake Powell’s water surface elevation will be at 3,521.84 feet – 32 feet above minimum power pool, or the amount needed to generate electricity from hydroelectric operations.

Separately, US Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton and other federal water officials said they are prepared to take additional administrative actions needed to protect the Colorado River, Lake Powell and Lake Mead from falling to “critically low levels.”

Earlier this summer, Touton set a deadline of mid-August for the seven Colorado River states to come up with a plan to cut as much as 25% of their river water usage. It became apparent early this week that those negotiations have stalled, which led some lawmakers and state water officials to call on the federal government to take aggressive action on their own.

Interior has not yet outlined next steps in Touton’s demand for the states’ plan.

 

If you thought the fight between white supremacist terrorists in the Southwestern US and the Biden administration was bad before, wait until Arizona declares war on California over water restrictions.

Does anyone believe GOP crackpot Kari Lake, if elected governor of Arizona, would comply with Biden Interior Department water regulations for a moment?

This has all the makings of a real, actual battle over resources, and it's only a taste of what's coming in the months and years ahead.

Daughter Of Darkness, Defeated Decisively

I have to admit, I was wrong about GOP Rep. Liz Cheney's Wyoming primary. I thought she was going to lose by 15-20 points in an embarrassing collapse of her political career, crucified by Wyoming GOP voters and Donald Trump as revenge for her role in his impeachment and as co-chair of the House January 6th Committee. But I was wrong.

 

She lost by 37 points instead. 

Trump and his allies have spent the spring and summer turning Republican primaries across the political map into bitter fights in which loyalty to the former President was the central factor.

He lost some high-profile battles, including in Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held off Trump-back challengers. 

But in most open-seat races, Trump's candidates triumphed. And on Tuesday in Wyoming, Trump, who had endorsed Hageman on the day she entered the race against Cheney, claimed his biggest victory yet. 

Cheney is now the eighth of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump following the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol to exit the House. Four have opted not to seek reelection, and four more have lost GOP primaries. 

In the lead-up to Tuesday's primary, Cheney insisted she was trying to win. 

But her strategy -- attempting to convince the Republican electorate in a state the former President won by a margin of 43 percentage points in 2020 to turn on him -- suggests she'd made a different choice: to go down swinging. 

She infuriated Republicans by urging Wyoming Democrats and unaffiliated voters to switch their party registration and vote in Tuesday's GOP primary. 

Surrounded by US Capitol Police officers on the campaign trail, Cheney opted for small, private events over rallies. She lambasted Trump in television interviews. 

Her campaign's closing message was a TV ad featuring her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, calling Trump a "coward" who lies to his supporters and "tried to steal the last election" using violence. 

Her election night event, on a ranch in Jackson Hole with the sun setting over the Grand Tetons in the background, didn't feature any television screens for supporters to watch results tabulated in a race Cheney was all but certain to lose. 

She told supporters that she could have cozied up to Trump and did what she'd done in the primary two years earlier: win with 73% of the vote. 

"That was a path I could not and would not take," Cheney said. "No House seat, no office in this land, is more important than the principles that we are all sworn to protect. And I well understood the potential political consequences of abiding by my duty." 

 

She went down swinging, she stuck to her guns, yes. But as I said last night on Twitter:

 

The lesson from Wyoming tonight is that Republican primary voters, given a choice between the lesser of two evils, jammed on the “Greater Evil” button like it dispensed cocaine and shrimp pad thai.

— Miscellaneous Top Zandar Documents (@ZandarVTS) August 17, 2022

 

She refused to go along with Trump's lie and was butchered for it. But the GOP primary voters in Wyoming were more than happy to break out the long knives. Republicans don't want principles, or duty, or anything of the sort. They want bloody vengeance against Democrats and their voters, and they want to elect people who will destroy their "enemies" and who will permit them to join in the lynchings. 

There were never "good" Republicans left.  Hell, there aren't even sane ones left. Trying to "save" this party is a fool's errand because there's no saving it. Last night proved that. There are no good Republicans left.

Just inchoate rage goblins.

That includes Liz Cheney.

 

The three-term congresswoman has not said what her next political move will be -- including whether she'll run for president in 2024 as a foil for Trump. 

But she used her speech to preview a continued fight against Trump, without laying out exactly what that means. 

"I have said since January 6 that I will do whatever it takes to ensure that Donald Trump is never again near the Oval Office, and I mean it. This is a fight for all of us, together," she said. 

"I'm a conservative Republican. ... But I love my country more. So I ask you tonight to join me: As we leave here, let us resolve that we will stand together, Republicans, Democrats and independents, against those who would destroy our republic." 

As she left the stage, Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" blared over the event's speakers.

 

Stopping Trump would mean electing Democrats, not finding Republican alternatives who will be purged from the party and left in piles of politically irrelevant smoking wreckage, conning the rubes into giving them money.

 

Guess which road  Cheney will take?

No, don't feel bad for her. The answer, as it has always been in the last several decades, is vote Blue.

Last Call For Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump is telling us his exact authoritarian GOP plans that will destroy the country piece by piece, and he's outlined them publicly in his hate rallies across the country over the summer.

For the first time since leaving office, former president Donald Trump has started getting specific about what he would do if he wins a second term in the White House.

The pitches he’s made onstage over the past month in speeches from D.C. to Dallas to Las Vegas are a stark contrast from ordinary stump speeches. He promises a break from American history if elected, with a federal government stacked with loyalists and unleashed to harm his perceived enemies.

There has never been a potential candidate like Trump: a defeated former president whose followers attacked the Capitol, who still insists he never lost, and who openly pledges revenge on those he views as having wronged him.

As his 2016 campaign and administration showed time and again, from the border wall to the Muslim ban, he and his aides worked furiously to translate rally slogans into official policy — whether or not there were legal or political barriers to overcome. And if Trump does return to the White House in 2025, this time he will be surrounded by fewer advisers interested in moderating or restraining his impulses.

Instead, his administration would probably be staffed by dedicated loyalists, and would have the advantage of an emboldened conservative majority on the Supreme Court. He and his advisers would also have more experience in how to exert power inside the federal bureaucracy and exploit vulnerabilities in institutions and laws.

Trump has strongly hinted that he wants to run for president again and has been considering an early announcement ahead of the November midterms. Last week’s search of his Mar-a-Lago residence and club added urgency for those of his advisers who favor an early launch, a person with direct knowledge told The Washington Post, but Trump hasn’t committed to a timeline.

 

What are his plans?

 

1. Federal death penalty for drug dealers.
2. Round up homeless into massive tent cities and leave them there.
3. Use the DC National Guard or even the US military against political protesters.
4. Fire tens of thousands of federal civil service workers.
5. Eliminate the Department of Education and run all schools from state and local school boards.
6. Eliminate early, mail, and absentee voting.
   

It's nuts across the board, and very, very fascist.

And pay attention, because whoever wins the 2024 GOP nomination will be pushing on all of these plans and more.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Louisiana

Louisiana's Supreme Court allowed the Republican near-total post-Dobbs ban on abortion to take effect on Friday, and as a result, the state's last three remaining abortion clinics are leaving the state, saying legally they have no choice. 

“I'm just not ready to walk away,” Kathaleen Pittman, the administrator of Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, told New Orleans Public Radio of the decision to relocate.

Hope, Women’s Health Care Center in New Orleans and Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge are all in the process of moving to states where abortions remain legal, though staff for those clinics declined to say where they would relocate to.

The Shreveport clinic has been the plaintiff, along with Medical Students for Choice, in a challenge against the state’s near-total ban since the days immediately following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. A spokesperson for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is part of the team representing the clinic, said litigation against the ban is still ongoing despite the state Supreme Court’s ruling Friday.

Pittman called the Louisiana’s Supreme Court’s decision to keep the law in effect, “devastating, when I think of the women who are now going to be denied care.”

Louisiana’s law bans abortions except in rare cases to save a pregnant person’s life or when the fetus wouldn’t survive birth. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest.

Louisiana’s ban has caused uncertainty and fear inside hospitals, where doctors fear prosecution for providing reproductive health care. A woman who was 16 weeks pregnant when her water broke was denied an abortion because of the law, and was forced to deliver a non-viable fetus.

Staff said the New Orleans and Baton Rouge clinics – which have the same owner – expect to move within the next three months. Pittman did not provide a timeline for the Shreveport clinic’s move.

In a statement, Pittman said Louisiana’s near-total ban has made it “impossible” for Hope to keep its doors open. Clinic employees shifted their duties to answering phones and helping Louisiana women find abortion clinics by directing them to abortionfinder.org and ineedana.com.

“I feel as if I'm in the Twilight Zone, and this dimension where nothing really makes sense,” Pittman said.

Supporters of the Hope clinic, which opened in 1980, have launched a $100,000 GoFundMe campaign to help with the clinic’s moving costs.

 

And so women in ed states will be made to suffer. In some cases, laws like these will kill them.

 

That's the entire point, of course.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

More and more MAGA CHUDs are choosing to throw their lives away in the name of their dark messiah, like this cement-head in Pennsylvania.

A Mercer County man threatened online to murder FBI agents after the bureau's search of former president Donald Trump's Florida estate last week, saying "come and get me you piece of [expletive] feds" and "I am going to [expletive] slaughter you," according to a federal complaint filed Monday in Pittsburgh.

Adam Bies, 46, is charged in U.S. District Court with influencing, impeding or retaliating against federal law officers.

He appeared briefly by video before a federal magistrate judge on Monday afternoon and will remain in U.S. custody pending a detention hearing Thursday. The judge said she'd likely appoint a lawyer for him after she had a chance to review his financial records.

According to an FBI affidavit, Mr. Bies issued a variety of threats on Gab after the Aug. 8 search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago complex in which agents removed boxes of classified documents.

According to records unsealed after the search, federal authorities are investigating Mr. Trump for potential violations of the Espionage Act.

The FBI's action has prompted a flood of violent rhetoric and threats from far-right extremists.

In the affidavit for Mr. Bies, the FBI said he compared bureau agents to the Nazi SS of World War II and the Soviet-era KGB and said everyone at the FBI, from agents to janitors, deserves to die.

"My only goal is to kill more of them before I drop," Mr. Bies wrote on Thursday. "I will not spend one second of my life in their custody."

The case began when an FBI national threat team received a tip from a domestic terrorism tracking group that someone calling himself "BlankFocus" was issuing threats on Gab.

"If you work for the FBI then you deserve to die," the poster wrote.

 

The FBI doesn't exactly take threats like this lightly after their Cincy field office was attacked last week. 

 

Enjoy prison, sucker.