Last Call For Lake Of Fire

Professional Republican election loser and perpetual victim Kari Lake is failing upwards to bigger and better things as she runs for Trump's VP in 2024 in Iowa, and she just might be the performative clown Trump's looking for in a running mate.

 

For two days, Kari Lake traversed this state with a clear message. She falsely claimed the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. She baselessly insisted that votes were rigged against her in her run for Arizona governor last year. And she warned without evidence that future races will be compromised.

“If you lose, lose with dignity. You shake the other person’s hand and walk away,” she told a crowd of approximately 200 at a reception hall on Friday, describing advice from her father on how to gracefully accept defeat. “I didn’t lose, so I’m not doing that.”

Lake, who lost in November by more than 17,000 votes to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D), is waging a new campaign without conceding the last one. The former television news anchor is traveling the country as one of the most vocal standard-bearers of an animated if wounded election denialism movement as she weighs a run for U.S. Senate and hears encouragement from some to set her sights on national office.

That movement has persisted in some quarters of the Republican Party despite candidates such as Lake experiencing pivotal losses in last year’s midterms after running openly on denying the results of the 2020 election. During a pair of stops Friday and Saturday in Iowa, Lake drew enthusiastic crowds here and in Ankeny. She walked onstage to Lenny Kravitz’s “American Woman.” She shook hands with supporters. She signed autographs. When an audience member here shouted, “Trump VP!,” Lake giggled at the outburst and repeated it.

“Trump VP,” Lake said, speaking of the former president, who in his third run for the White House has continued to make false claims about his 2020 election defeat. “I love President Trump. I will do everything in my power to get that man elected.”

Yet not everyone who came to see Lake was keen to hear her rehash past elections, and others in the party have been sharply critical of her rhetoric, seeing her as a part of a Trump-era scourge at the ballot box that cost the GOP winnable races last fall and could doom its chances in 2024. Her trip to this early presidential nominating state underlined tensions in the party between those who want to move away from the cause and others determined to keep it alive. 

Dwain Swanson, 88, said he has watched Lake’s interviews on Fox News and Newsmax with interest, drawn by her charisma and his belief in her claim — included in a lawsuit rejected by a judge — that hundreds of thousands of mail-in ballots did not follow the chain of custody. While he felt she is too inexperienced for the White House, Swanson said he felt she deserved to be Arizona’s governor. “She wasn’t defeated,” he said.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Lake said everyone she met in Iowa agreed with her election claims. When pointed to some people who had raised doubts about election denialism, she called a reporter “brainwashed.”

“Everyone who talked with me in that line said keep fighting,” she said, referring to the hordes of people who queued for selfies with Lake, “because they are stealing elections in Arizona and other states. And because of that, what we want as Americans isn’t happening.”

 

So yes, Republicans like Lake are running openly on the fact they can't win elections. 

The real issue is what anyone expects Lake to do about it, and the answer is "why have them at all?"

And when that dawns on you that this really is the GOP point of view...

 

You'll understand why she's not at home watching Real Housewives like most election losers.

I Fought The Law And The Law Won, Con't

Republicans are increasingly declaring war on county prosecutors and district attorneys who exercise prosecutorial discretion by refusing to enforce unconstitutional abortion laws, eliminating them through new legislation, impeachment, gubernatiorial fiat, state courts, or in some cases complete state takeover of the jurisdiction.

GOP lawmakers see a major flaw in their states’ near-total abortion bans: Some local prosecutors won’t enforce them.

Republicans in Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Texas — frustrated by progressive district attorneys who have publicly pledged not to bring charges under their state’s abortion laws — have introduced bills that would allow state officials to either bypass the local prosecutors or kick them out of office if their abortion-related enforcement is deemed too lenient.

In Texas, one of several bills lawmakers are pushing would allow the state attorney general or a private individual to ask a court to remove a district attorney who fails to prosecute abortion-related offenses and other “crimes of violence.” They also plan to introduce a bill to allow any resident to bring civil claims against anyone suspected of “aiding and abetting” an abortion.

In Georgia, legislators want to create a prosecutorial oversight commission that could discipline or remove local prosecutors who demonstrate a “willful and persistent failure to perform his or her duties.”

A bill introduced in the South Carolina House would give the state attorney general the power to prosecute abortion cases — something currently under the purview of local district attorneys.

And in Indiana, proposed legislation would allow a legislatively appointed special prosecutor to enforce laws when a local prosecutor declines to do so.

The mounting tension between Republican lawmakers and local prosecutors over abortion is one part of a broader fight over diverging approaches to criminal justice — seen in recent battles over drug laws, property crimes and other offenses. As more prosecutors, particularly in progressive metropolises in red states, win elections by breaking with the decadeslong tough-on-crime mindset and running as a check on GOP lawmakers, conservative state officials say they now need to rein in their excesses.

“Whatever issue we’re talking about — whether it’s marijuana, abortion, enforcing homicide statutes, enforcing whatever the law is — the law is on the books, and the law is supposed to be applied equally across the board among our citizens,” said Republican Indiana Sen. Aaron Freeman, who is sponsoring the special prosecutor bill. “If we’re just going to basically ignore the Constitution and our republic and just do whatever the hell we want, well, that’s a society that scares the hell out of me.”

GOP officials are also exploring nonlegislative tactics. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democrat, over his public pledge not to bring charges under the state’s 15-week abortion ban. Warren sued in federal court to be reinstated, and while the judge agreed that DeSantis’ action violated the state’s constitution, he ruled that only a state court could reverse the governor’s decision.

 

"Small government" Republicans certainly have no problem with tying the hands of local prosecutors when it comes to abortion bans that harm or even kill women, but God forbid a local sheriff or constable refuse to enforce a gun safety law, right?

 

The law, and who it is enforced against, is whatever Republicans say. And when Republican states eventually start filling prisons with women who had miscarriages or abortions in other states, it'll be what these Republicans say, too.

Last Call For We Don't Need No Education, Con't

The College Board, having been caught red-handed in bowing to Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Stop Woke Act by gutting its proposed African American Studies AP course in order to try to satisfy the ridiculous, unconstitutional and immoral standards of Republican racism, now realizes that if it wants to have any credibility left with other states and students that it will now have to fight back.

 

THE COLLEGE BOARD, the group that publishes Advanced Placement (AP) exams, accused Florida’s Education Department, under Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ leadership, of “slander” over comments that its proposed curriculum for a pilot AP African American Studies course “lacks educational value.”

The College Board also refuted reports that it caved to DeSantis and his administration’s criticism and made changes to its program. DeSantis has said Florida would not allow the course to be taught in the state unless significant revisions were made. This is in part due to Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act,” legislation that went into effect this past summer banning the teaching of critical race theory (CRT) to the state’s K-12 students. DeSantis last year signed into law another bill, nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, barring teachers in Florida schools from discussing gender and sexuality. This is all part of a larger right-wing movement to demonize discussions of race, sexuality, and privilege.

“There continue to be conversations and misinformation, and we felt the urgency to set the record straight and not wait another day to do so,” a College Board spokesperson said, per the Tampa Bay Times.

The board in a statement released late Saturday said that it “deeply regret[s] not immediately denouncing the Florida Department of Education’s slander, magnified by the DeSantis administration’s subsequent comments, that African American Studies ‘lacks educational value.'”

The statement continued, “Our lack of clarity allowed the narrative to arise that political forces had ‘downgraded’ the role of… contemporary movements and debates in the AP class. The actual pilot course materials teachers used were completed on April 29, 2022 — far prior to any pushback.”

The College Board also denied being in contact with the state of Florida regarding the content of the AP African American Studies course. “This is a false and politically motivated charge. Our exchanges with them are actually transactional emails about the filing of paperwork to request a pilot course code and our response to their request that the College Board explain why we believe the course is not in violation of Florida laws,” the organization wrote. 

 

While it's far past time for the College Board to apologize, and it never should have so openly failed Black students in the first place, the actual villain here remains Ron DeSantis and the Florida GOP for its continuing efforts to eliminate Black history from the state's schools and curricula. 

Something to keep in mind.

 

 

Going Off The Rails

The story of a train derailment last week near East Palestine, Ohio is getting more and more bizarre, and more and more dangerous by the day. The Norfolk Southern train was carrying potentially dangerous chemicals and an axle broke, spilling cars and chemicals all over the place. The train caught fire, residents were evacuated, a controlled burn of vinyl chloride was conducted, and resident are now back.

And here's where things really start to go off the rails.

Days after a train carrying hazardous materials went off the tracks in northeastern Ohio, burst into flames and stoked fears of a “potential explosion,” authorities assured evacuated residents that it was safe to return to town.

More than a week after the derailment, Maura Todd is not convinced.

The headaches and nausea her family experienced at their house last weekend and the pungent odor that reminds her of a mixture of nail polish remover and burning tires told her otherwise, Todd said.

On Saturday, she was making plans to pack her bags and move away from East Palestine, Ohio, to Kentucky with her family and her three miniature Schnauzers — at least temporarily, Todd said.

“I’ve watched every news conference and I haven’t heard anything that makes me think that this is a data-driven decision,” Todd, 44, told The Washington Post. “We don’t feel like we have a whole lot of information.”

After the derailment, federal and local officials repeatedly told residents that the air quality was safe and that the water supply was untainted.

But more than a week after the Norfolk Southern train derailed — causing an explosion that sent flames into the air and a cloud of smoke across parts of the village, and leading authorities to release a toxic plume — residents told The Post that they had yet to see a full list of the chemicals that were aboard the train when it lost its course.

Without much information, residents and experts told The Post that they question whether it’s safe to return to their homes a week after contaminants flowed into local streams and spewed into the air. In some waterways, dead fish had been spotted, a state official confirmed at a news briefing, and residents returning to homes in a neighboring Pennsylvania town were advised by state officials to open their windows, turn on fans and wipe down all surfaces with diluted bleach.

“The biggest question remaining is what, if anything, is still being released from the site, first and foremost,” said Peter DeCarlo, an environmental health professor at Johns Hopkins University. “If there are still residual chemical emissions, then that still presents a danger for people in the area.”

It was 9 p.m. on Feb. 3 when 50 cars of a 141-car Norfolk Southern train derailed, igniting a large blaze near the hazardous chemicals that kept firefighters away for days. The derailment, which caused no injuries, probably was caused by mechanical issues on one of the rail car axles, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has said.

The incident caused further alarm nearly 48 hours after the crash, when changing conditions in a rail car caused authorities to warn of a possible “major explosion.” Officials on Monday conducted a “controlled release” of vinyl chloride to prevent a blast, and on Wednesday they allowed residents to return.

Some nights, resident Eric Whitining told The Post, the air smells like an “over-chlorinated swimming pool” and his eyes burn. He returned to his house the day authorities lifted the evacuation order. He can’t move his family of five out of their home, so he says he has no choice but to stay put and follow authorities’ instructions.

“For a small town, we have to trust them, because what else do we have to do?” Whitining said. “We have to trust that they are not lying to us.”

 

When  NewsNation correspondent Evan Lambert tried to ask questions at Ohio GOP Gov. Mike Dewine's press conference addressing the evacuation order, he was beaten and arrested by DeWine's State Police goons.

A reporter was pushed to the ground, handcuffed and arrested for trespassing while covering a news conference about the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in Ohio.

NewsNation posted video of correspondent Evan Lambert being arrested Wednesday in the gymnasium of an elementary school in East Palestine where Gov. Mike DeWine was giving an update about the accident.

Lambert was held for about five hours before being released from jail, NewsNation reported.

“I’m doing fine right now. It’s been an extremely long day,” Lambert said after his release. “No journalist expects to be arrested when you’re doing your job, and I think that’s really important that that doesn’t happen in our country.”

 

Now the fears are that burning the vinyl chloride, while preventing a devastating explosion, has now contaminated hundreds of square miles of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. 

Answers at this point are non-existent. Norfolk Southern has given East Palestine $25,000 (yes, twenty-five thousand, for a company that made billions last year in record profits) and they're expecting this to all just go away now.

Something tells me it won't.

Sunday Long Read: The Cost Of Fame

I remember growing up hearing about stories of how child actors in my favorite movies and TV shows had rough lives, even tragic ones. Decades later in the era of internet stardom and viral engagement, the cost of fame for kids and families still can be ruinous. Our Sunday Long Read comes from Atavist Magazine's Nile Cappello with the story of Johna Ramirez, whose daughter Liana and son Jentzen became internet stars in their own right, and how the family crashed hard into the reality of being preyed upon by an even bigger internet star and her entourage in the YouTube world.

 

Hollywood is the last place you’d expect to meet Johna Kay Ramirez. She doesn’t come across as cutthroat. Thin, with auburn hair and warm eyes, Johna is thoughtful when she speaks and quick to apologize when she goes on a tangent. She’s the kind of person who knows that “bless your heart” is often a veiled insult. Hollywood, with all its glitz, glam, and high drama, became part of Johna’s story because of her children.

Born and raised in the Great Plains, Johna met Nelson Ramirez at a department store in Enid, Oklahoma; she sold shoes, he worked in menswear. They married, and in 1991, when Nelson got a job as a tech recruiter in Texas, the Ramirezes moved to Austin. Johna did video production for a local news station, then worked for a state agency. In 1998, when the Ramirezes had their first child, a daughter they named Liana, Johna became a stay-at-home mom. A son, Jentzen, came along eight years later.

Liana caught the entertainment bug first. What started as recreational dance classes quickly evolved into a passion for the performing arts. Liana loved being under bright stage lights, and Johna was proud to watch her precocious toddler blossom into a talented young girl. Liana appeared in local dance and theater productions, and by the time she was 13, her ambitions had surpassed the scope of what Austin could offer. She dreamed of being on the Disney Channel, of making it big in Hollywood. If Selena Gomez, a half-Latina teenager from Texas just like her, could become a star, Liana was sure she could, too. She had the talent and she had Johna, her chauffeur, line-reading partner, meal deliverer, videographer, and number one fan. “I knew how much my daughter wanted this, how much it meant to her,” Johna said. “So whatever I could do, whatever skills I had, I would use them to help.”

In September 2011, Johna snapped a photo of Liana at an airport gate. Her smile is all teeth, and a black bow holds back a portion of her curly brown hair. Mother and daughter were on their way to Los Angeles for Liana’s first Hollywood audition. The role was in a production of A Snow White Christmas, a stage musical. If cast, Liana would appear with Neil Patrick Harris, then a fan favorite on TV’s How I Met Your Mother, and with Lindsay Pearce of The Glee Project.

The audition was held at the Westfield Culver City mall on a Saturday morning. Kids and their guardians hustled inside and waited near a stage situated between Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret. Liana received her audition number and practiced the dance routine she’d be performing. She breezed through the first cut and kept going. In the final round, she danced to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” At the end of the number, right as the audience began to applaud, Liana looked over at her mom, beaming.

Johna announced the good news on Facebook. “She nailed it and she got a role as a dancer,” Johna wrote. “Can you hear us screaming?” Back in Texas, the Austin American–Statesman ran a piece about Liana. “Teen heads to Hollywood to dance in her dramatic debut,” the headline read.

The Ramirezes decided that Nelson would stay in Texas, where he had recently started his own business, while Johna took Liana and five-year-old Jentzen to California for the duration of the production. They would be joined by Johna’s mother, Martha, who would help with child care and managing Liana’s obligations. Johna drove her kids and mom to Los Angeles, a more than 20-hour trip mostly through dry, flat rattlesnake country. She’d never taken a leap like this—never lived somewhere like Los Angeles, been around serious entertainment people, or parented without Nelson. Johna was leaving her comfort zone in the rearview mirror.

She was surprised by how much she liked Los Angeles. Within a few days of arriving, she and Martha had their first celebrity encounter, an exchange with Kiefer Sutherland over potatoes at a Whole Foods. The city’s traffic was a pain, but they managed to sightsee, visiting the Hard Rock Cafe and Universal Studios, where Jentzen posed with actors dressed up as Dora the Explorer and the donkey from Shrek. Liana stayed busy with the stage production, and Johna spent long hours at the theater, watching as her daughter rehearsed and had costume fittings. Liana would appear in 32 performances over two months, working straight through the holidays.

When the show wrapped, the Ramirezes reunited in Austin. Within a year, however, they decided to resume living as a split family. The musical had led to auditions and bookings for Liana, and she needed to be closer to LA to take advantage of them. Johna relocated to California full-time with her kids and tended to their day-to-day needs, while Nelson provided financial support from afar. Liana made appearances on Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel, and the prime-time network shows Criminal Minds and The Goldbergs.

As it turned out, Liana wasn’t the only family member who had star potential. With a smattering of freckles and a megawatt smile, Jentzen drew attention from casting directors, talent, and other industry insiders when Johna brought him on set with his sister. “You’ve got to put him in commercials,” stage moms told Johna, pinching Jentzen’s cheeks and ruffling his shaggy brown hair. He was in the sweet spot for child actors: old enough to memorize lines, but still young enough to be considered cute. Soon Jentzen was building out his own IMDb page, appearing in web series, short films, and the Lifetime movie Babysitter’s Black Book.

For Johna, Jentzen’s success further validated her decision to move to Los Angeles. Every parent hopes that a child will find their thing. Other families travel to soccer tournaments, move across the country to train with gymnastics coaches, or spend thousands on STEM camps where kids learn to code and build robots. Liana and Jentzen didn’t just like acting—they were good at it. Plus, their budding careers allowed Johna to spend time with them, whether that was backstage at rehearsals, stuck in gridlock on the 101, or putting together audition tapes at home. “It wasn’t just something they did,” Johna said. “It was something we all did together.”

Without auditioning for it, Johna had been cast in a new role: “momager.” She played it well, surprising even herself with how easily she toggled between cooking meals and attending movie premieres. She learned how to advocate for her kids’ needs and when to say no on their behalf.

As Jentzen approached his teenage years, he began kicking around the idea of getting into YouTube. A child actor’s presence on social media was increasingly important to casting agents and directors. Johna, whose experience with social media was limited largely to updating her Facebook account, wasn’t convinced. “I just didn’t know what we’d post,” she said with a shrug.

Then, eight years after arriving in Hollywood, the Ramirezes saw a promising ad, known as a breakdown, on LA Casting, a website that film, TV, and online productions use to enlist talent. A breakdown typically includes a description of the project, the parts to be cast, and the pay rate, along with information about how to audition. The breakdown the Ramirezes saw was for something called the “Piper Rockeele Show,” which was planning to shoot a YouTube video on the Venice Beach boardwalk. Described as taking inspiration from the movie Grease, the shoot would involve a tween character named Chase brushing off Piper, the show’s eponymous star, to look cool in front of his friends. Chase seemed like a good fit for Jentzen; the listing offered $1,500 for eight hours of work, a very good rate.

The Ramirezes weren’t familiar with Piper Rockelle—her name was spelled wrong in the breakdown—but an internet search led to a tween girl with a YouTube channel boasting hundreds of hours of video content, including original songs, makeup tutorials, and staged pranks and challenges like “24 Hours HANDCUFFED to my ‘BOYFRIEND.’ ” Jentzen showed Johna his iPhone screen. “Mom, she’s got a lot of subscribers,” he said—more than two million.

Johna didn’t have a problem with Jentzen participating in another kid’s social media content. It was easier than striking out on his own in the wilds of YouTube. Jentzen replied to the ad and was asked to come in for an audition.

The day of the tryout, the Ramirezes had another appointment across town and were running late. Johna tracked down a number for the person, a voice coach, who’d posted the breakdown on LA Casting. According to Johna, the coach assured her there wouldn’t be a problem. “They really wanted him at the callback,” he said. “They really liked him.”

It is one of many moments that now haunt Johna. “Can you imagine if we would have missed the callback?” she said, shaking her head. “How maybe life would’ve been different?”

More than three years later, Piper Rockelle’s popularity has exploded. She has more than 25 million followers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fan pages dedicated to her. Piper has staged live meet-and-greets and musical performances around the world, and she sells her own line of merchandise. She lives in a pink and purple house worth $2.3 million in Sherman Oaks, previously owned by the actress Bella Thorne.

But all is not well in Piper’s world. Her own momager, Tiffany Smith, is being sued by 11 former members of the Squad, the name given to the circle of child actors who appear in Piper’s videos and ostensibly are her friends. Two of the plaintiffs are cousins of Piper’s. The kids allege that, when they were in the Squad, Smith verbally, physically, and in some cases sexually abused them. They also claim that Smith knowingly produced exploitative content featuring her daughter and other minors. “Smith would often boast to Plaintiffs and others about being the ‘Madam of YouTube’ and a ‘Pimp of YouTube,’ and that she ‘makes kiddie porn,’ ” states the lawsuit, which was filed in January 2022. Smith’s boyfriend, Hunter Hill, and Piper Rockelle Inc. are also defendants in the suit. Hill, who works behind the scenes to produce Piper’s YouTube videos, is accused of conspiring with Smith to “sabotage” the plaintiffs’ careers after they left the Squad.

Johna knows the plaintiffs and their parents personally. She doesn’t doubt their claims. However, she isn’t part of the lawsuit. For the past few years, Johna has been fighting a legal battle of her own. It began after Jentzen auditioned for Piper’s team, and it has pitted her against Smith as well as her own family. Today, according to Johna, all she wants is to have a relationship with her children again.

This story is based on interviews with Johna and Nelson Ramirez; two of the plaintiffs’ mothers, Steevy Areeco and Angela Sharbino; and the plaintiffs’ attorney, Matthew Sarelson. It draws on hundreds of pages of court documents, personal communications shared by sources, and the trove of social media content produced by Piper and the Squad. Smith and Hill did not respond to requests for comment. They have denied the allegations against them.

 

It's a tragic story indeed. Just because everything's moved into the digital age of influencers and followers, doesn't mean the old warnings about Hollywood aren't true.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Turns out Trump did indeed hire an analytical firm to"find the election fraud" in December 2020 and when they find no evidence of it, he buried their findings and has lied about the election for more than two years now.

Former president Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter.

The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts. Among the areas examined were voter machine malfunctions, instances of dead people voting and any evidence that could help Trump show he won, the people said. None of the findings were presented to the public or in court.

About a dozen people at the firm worked on the report, including econometricians, who use statistics to model and predict outcomes, the people said. The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump continues to falsely assert that the 2020 election was stolen despite abundant evidence to the contrary, much of which had been provided to him or was publicly available before the Capitol assault. The Trump campaign’s commissioning of its own report to study the then-president’s fraud claims has not been previously reported.

“They looked at everything: change of addresses, illegal immigrants, ballot harvesting, people voting twice, machines being tampered with, ballots that were sent to vacant addresses that were returned and voted,” said a person familiar with the work who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private research and meetings. “Literally anything you could think of. Voter turnout anomalies, date of birth anomalies, whether dead people voted. If there was anything under the sun that could be thought of, they looked at it.”

The findings were not what the Trump campaign had been hoping for, according to the four people. While the researchers believed there were voting anomalies and unusual data patterns in a few states, along with some instances in which laws may have been skirted, they did not believe the anomalies were significant enough to make a difference in who won the election.

The research also contradicted some of Trump’s more conspiratorial theories, such as his baseless allegations about rigged voting machines and large numbers of dead people voting.

A person familiar with the findings said there were at least a dozen hypotheses that Trump’s team wanted tested.

“None of these were significant enough,” this person said. “Just like any election, there are always errors, omissions and irregularities. It was nowhere close enough to what they wanted to prove, and it actually went in both directions.”

 

It means Trump knew the election wasn't stolen, and that he went ahead with his January 6th coup plot anyway.

Another piece of strong evidence that, when combined with the rest of the January 6th report, proves Trump tried to overthrow the government.

He should be in prison already.

A Red Alert For Twitter Blue

The reason why mega-billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter is simple: he wants to spread the worst of hate speech on his platform, and wants to get rich doing it.

 

Elon Musk’s restoration of 10 Twitter accounts that were banned under the platform’s previous management has generated enough engagement since they returned to the platform to likely generate $19 million in advertising revenue annually, a nonprofit dedicated to countering hate speech online has concluded.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) said the 10 accounts were among hundreds thought to have been restored under a “general amnesty” that Musk announced in late November.

The report comes as Musk is working to generate revenue for the company, which he has said is in dire financial straits despite the layoffs of thousands of employees and the suspension of payments for a number of services including rent on Twitter’s downtown San Francisco headquarters. Twitter’s advertising revenue in December was 70 percent lower than the previous year, according to data from Standard Media Index, an advertising research firm.

CCDH’s chief executive, Imran Ahmed, linked the drop off in ad revenue to the decision by Musk to restore the formerly banned accounts. “Our research shows that there is a depressingly banal answer to why Elon Musk would reinstate the accounts of self-professed Nazis, disinformation actors, misogynists and homophobes — it’s highly profitable,” he said.

Musk did not immediately respond to request for comment. Twitter’s communications department was eliminated in layoffs last year.

The CCDH uncovered multiple examples of advertisements from major national brands, including Amazon, Apple TV, the NFL and Fiverr, that appeared next to content from the 10 extremist influencers. In one instance, an ad for Wendy’s appeared next to a tweet by Stew Peters, an anti-vaccine influencer with 168,000 followers, where he referred to the vaccine as a “BioWeapon” and claimed people have been “murdered” by it.

In another example, an ad for the streaming service Peacock appeared next to a tweet from Anthime Gionet, an influencer known as Baked Alaska, who was recently sentenced for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The ad appeared next to a tweet where Gionet asked his followers whether he should “say the n-word.”

Brand advertisements also appeared next to tweets about election fraud, vaccine conspiracy theories, false statements about Ukraine and bio weapons, and tweets denigrating women in business, CCDH said.

Twitter’s drop-off in advertising revenue has been attributed in part to concerns that such juxtapositions would damage brands. “A lot of brands are scared of Twitter given Elon’s rhetoric,” said Brendan Gahan, chief innovation officer at Mekanism, an advertising agency. “He’s created an atmosphere that makes Twitter feel very unsafe for brands.”

 

Musk's "business plan" for Twitter seems suicidal until you factor in rehabilitating the worst of his new friends in anticipation of 2024 and all the advertising dollars he plans to make on the political circuit, and all the favors he'll have available to collect in the future from those Republicans that his platform helps to elect.

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

Increasingly, the GOP solution to America's increasing diversity is gerrymandering that leaves majority Black voters concentrated into a few precincts where the rest of the state can be safely ruled by white voters. The few instances where Black voters have concentrated power enough to elect Black Democratic leaders are now being systemically dismantled by subjecting those locations to state rule instead of local.

This is especially true in the South, where Black folk make up 20% of the population of a state rather than single digit percentages in other states.

 

Racial tensions in Mississippi echoed in Missouri Thursday, as Black Democratic lawmakers accused the state’s Republican House leadership of racism for shutting down a Black lawmaker’s speech and passing a bill that could strip power from the Black woman elected as prosecutor in St. Louis.

The discord in the Missouri House came just days after a similar situation in Mississippi, where Black lawmakers denounced the majority-white, Republican-led Legislature for voting to take power away from local leaders in the predominantly Black city of Jackson.

Like in Mississippi, Missouri’s legislature has a largely white Republican majority. Most of the Black lawmakers represent the state’s two largest urban areas of St. Louis and Kansas City.

Missouri Republicans have made anti-crime legislation a priority this session, often highlighting high crime rates in St. Louis as an impetus. The House passed legislation by a 109-35 vote that would allow Republican Gov. Mike Parson to appoint a special prosecutor to handle violent crimes in areas with high homicide rates, such as St. Louis. The bill also would expand mandatory minimum sentences for persistent felony offenders, among other things.

State Rep. Kevin Windham, a Black Democrat from St. Louis County, was reading aloud a news article about the Mississippi situation during the House debate when some white Republican lawmakers objected that his speech had nothing to do with the Missouri legislation.

House Speaker Dean Plocher ruled Windham out of order, halting his speech. Windham’s microphone was turned off. House Majority Leader Jon Patterson then made a motion to shut off debate on the bill, which the Republican majority voted to do — leaving other Black Democrats standing without getting a turn to speak.

 

Black voters elected Black leaders in Jackson,Mississippi and after the state's GOP all but assured that the city's water crisis would only get worse, Republicans then had the excuse they needed to put the city under receivership.

In Missouri, a Black prosecutor is being stripped of her power because of criminal justice reform.  Again, the solution is to put Black citizens under statewide white control because "they know best".

 

In Nashville, Tennessee, the state GOP legislature has introduced dozens of law punishing local Black government leaders in retaliation for the city withdrawing Nashville's consideration as host for the 2024 GOP National Convention.

In Tennessee, the latest statehouse backlash stems back to last summer when Nashville’s metro council spiked a plan to bring the 2024 Republican National Convention to the city. Progressive leaders argued that hosting the massive Republican gathering would go against the city’s values. Others expressed hesitation toward tying up so many city resources — particularly for an event that residents largely wouldn’t attend.

For GOP leaders, who had spent months lobbying and wooing party officials on why Music City should host the convention, Nashville had crossed yet another line. Warnings began trickling in that consequences were imminent.

Nashville continued to attract political ire after council members began discussing whether to cover expenses for employees who cross state lines to get an abortion. That’s because Tennessee’s abortion ban — which was enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — currently has no explicit exemptions.

Lawmakers have been swift in filing bills that offer retribution. Legislation has been introduced that would slash Nashville’s 40-member city council in half. A separate bill would give the state control of the governing board for the city’s airport, stadiums and other landmarks, while another proposal would remove Nashville’s ability to charge the tax that funds its convention center. Republicans then introduced a bill that would block cities from using public funds for reimbursing employees who travel to get an abortion.

Advocates have raised alarm at lower-profile bills, like the proposal to eliminate all police oversight boards in Tennessee. Nashville has one, and lawmakers already restricted it under a 2019 law. Some Republicans have proposed a bill that would rename a portion of Nashville Rep. John Lewis Way to Trump Boulevard.

Specifically, the effort to cut Nashville’s abnormally large city council has sparked some of the fiercest concerns, as advocates warn that doing so will undo representation of minority communities and erode council members’ ability to address constituent needs.

“When people reach out to us about trash pickup, about deaths in their family, about needing things and resources, these are individuals that we are in community with,” said Delishia Porterfield, who has served on Nashville’s council since 2019. “And when you raise the number of constituents that we as council members serve, not only do you make our jobs harder, but you make us further from the people that elected us to serve.

Nashville has a combined city-county government has operated under a 40-member council — significantly larger compared to even more populous cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco — since 1963, when leaders were wrestling with consolidating the city with the surrounding county, and others were working to ensure Black leaders maintained a strong representation inside the southern city.

“When the city was consolidated, and the size increased to 40, there was a promise that we would have more Black representation,” said Democratic Rep. Harold Love Jr., whose father was among the first Black members to be elected to the newly expanded city council in 1963.

“So for me, there are some deep historical ties to the size of metro council when it comes to Black and minority representation that I hope my colleagues would understand,” he said. 

 

Your GOP colleagues understand perfectly. You will never have the power to resist them again. They will take everything from you. It's the new Jim Crow, and the Roberts Court will never stop it.

Last Call For The GOP Disqualifying Equality

Republicans are increasingly moving towards the criminalization, incarceration, and eventual extermination of America's transgender folks, and they're not hiding this fact in the least.

 

South Dakota is set to be the latest state to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth after state senators on Thursday voted to send a measure barring minors from accessing certain medications and procedures to Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, who has signaled she will sign the bill into law.

South Dakota’s House Bill 1080, introduced in January by state Republican Rep. Bethany Soye, seeks to prohibit state health care providers from “knowingly” prescribing puberty blockers or hormones or performing surgeries that “validate” a minor’s sex if it is inconsistent with the sex they were assigned at birth.

The bill includes exceptions for intersex youth, minors diagnosed with sexual development disorders, and minors that require treatment for an infection, injury, disease or disorder that has been “caused or exacerbated by” gender-affirming medical intervention.

Health care professionals who continue to provide treatment will have their medical licenses revoked, according to the bill, although physicians that have initiated a course of treatment for a minor patient prior to July 1 may “systematically reduce” that treatment through Dec. 31.

An amendment proposed Thursday by Sen. Tim Reed, one of just four Democrats in the South Dakota Senate, would have allowed transgender minors to have access to puberty blockers, which he said can help alleviate a child’s anxiety about their gender “so that counseling can begin.”

“Blockers have a place helping families navigate through an extremely difficult situation,” Reed said Thursday. “We need to be able to give these kids a chance.”

Reed’s amendment failed to pass with the support of just nine senators.

 

What trans folks are telling us is that Republicans will not stop with outlawing gender-affirming care for kids. We're already up to young adults age 25 in Utah and SC, and then it will be everyone, either explicitly, or more likely, by shutting down clinics and center that provide this care through de facto regulations, the way Texas and other states did with regulating abortion clinics to death.

Gov. Spencer Cox of Utah signed a bill on Saturday that blocks minors from receiving gender-transition health care, the first such measure in the country this year in what is expected to be a wave of legislation by state lawmakers to restrict transgender rights.

The law prohibits transgender youth in the state from receiving gender-affirming surgery and places an indefinite ban on hormone therapy, with limited exceptions.

Mr. Cox, a Republican, said in a statement that banning these treatments was necessary until more research could be done on their long-term effects.

“While we understand our words will be of little comfort to those who disagree with us, we sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures,” the governor said.

Leading medical groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have rejected claims that gender-affirming care is harmful to transgender children or adults.

 

If you're noticing the same "Well we can't trust doctors, they lie to us!" justification for criminalizing gender-affirming care that Republicans are using with vaccines (and soon, medical abortion care for FDA-approved drugs that have been around for decades) it's because it's deliberate.

It goes "We have to protect X!" followed by "The science isn't settled!" followed by "The science is wrong, this has to be stopped!" followed by legislation criminalizing doctors, nurses, health care workers, clinicians, and everyone else involved.

Kentucky Republicans plan to follow suit.

 

Republican lawmakers are proposing bills aimed at how LGBTQ topics should be handled in Kentucky’s schools.

Republican lawmakers filed House Bill 173 Tuesday and Senate Bill 102 was filed Wednesday. The bills have nearly identical language. Senator Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, also filed Senate Bill 150, a similar bill.

He says SB 150 proposes three things.

One, it would require a district to notify parents when a student seeks out mental or physical health services. Two, a district must give parents a two-week notice and an opportunity to review materials for any curriculum related to human sexuality. Three, the bill proposes it would provide First Amendment protections to staff and students by ensuring no one is compelled or required to use pronouns that do not conform to a student’s biological sex.

“The time to protect our students is long past due in the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” said Sen. Wise. “As the former Education Committee Chairman, I’ve heard from parents, I’ve heard from administrators, those inside and outside of public education and from my own constituents, saying they are concerned where are educational priorities line up in Kentucky.”

 

Going after trans folks in order to "protect kids" is there to generate legal precedents and religious objections into state laws so that protections for marginalized groups can be dismantled across the board, for women, for Black, Hispanic and Asian groups, for other gay/lesbian folks, for non-Christian religions, and everyone else.

 

As I have tirelessly said for the last several years, the Republican goal is to eliminate the Civil Rights era and dominate America with white male Christian theocracy. Everyone else will be a provisional citizen as long as they remain "one of the good ones".

 

As Jamelle Bouie says, they're starting with trans folks. The rest of us are next. 

Over the past year, we have seen a sweeping and ferocious attack on the rights and dignity of transgender people across the country.

In states led by Republicans, conservative lawmakers have introduced or passed dozens of laws that would give religious exemptions for discrimination against transgender people, prohibit the use of bathrooms consistent with their gender identity and limit access to gender-affirming care.

In lashing out against L.G.B.T.Q. people, lawmakers in at least eight states have even gone as far as to introduce bans on “drag” performance that are so broad as to threaten the ability of gender-nonconforming people simply to exist in public.

Some of the most powerful Republicans in the country want to go even further. Donald Trump has promised to radically limit transgender rights if he is returned to the White House in 2024. In a video address to supporters, he said he would push Congress to pass a national ban on gender-affirming care for transgender youth and restrict Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals and medical professionals providing that care.

He wants to target transgender adults as well. “I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” Trump said. “I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth.”

There is plenty to say about the reasoning and motivation for this attack — whether it comes from Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis in Florida or Gov. Greg Abbott in Texas — but the important thing to note, for now, is that it is a direct threat to the lives and livelihoods of transgender people. It’s the same for other L.G.B.T.Q. Americans, who once again find themselves in the cross-hairs of an aggressive movement of social conservatives who have become all the more emboldened in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.

This is no accident. The attacks on transgender people and L.G.B.T.Q. rights are of a piece with the attack on abortion and reproductive rights. It is a singular assault on the bodily autonomy of all Americans, meant to uphold and reinforce traditional hierarchies of sex and gender.

 

This is the wall we all have to defend, lest we all become the targets. They will not stop at eliminating trans folks. We have to stop them here and now.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

Tennessee's GOP Speaker of the House wants to stop taking nearly 2 billion in federal education money so the state can be "free of Washington's influence" and, you know, not have to have schools that serve the poor, disabled, or non-English speakers or any of that equality crap.

 

One of Tennessee’s most influential Republican lawmakers says the state should stop accepting the nearly $1.8 billion of federal K-12 education dollars that help provide support for low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities.

House Speaker Cameron Sexton told The Associated Press that he has introduced a bill to explore the idea during this year’s legislative session and has begun discussions with Gov. Bill Lee and other key GOP lawmakers.

“Basically, we’ll be able to educate the kids how Tennessee sees fit,” Sexton said, pointing that rejecting the money would mean that Tennessee would no longer have “federal government interference.”

To date, no state has successfully rejected federal education funds even as state and local officials have long grumbled about some of the requirements and testing that at times come attached to the money. The idea has also come up elsewhere in recent months among GOP officials, including in Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Many Republican politicians and candidates at the federal level have also made a habit of calling for the outright elimination of the U.S. Department of Education.

According to Sexton, Tennessee is currently in the financial position to use state tax dollars to replace federal education funds. He pointed to the $3.2 billion in new spending outlined in Gov. Lee’s recent budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year as proof that the state could easily cover the federal government’s portion.

Federal dollars make up a small slice of Tennessee’s K-12 education funding, which had an almost $8.3 billion budget as of fiscal year 2023. Yet the federal money is seen as a key tool to supporting schools in low-income areas and special education.

Sexton says he has been mulling the proposal for a while, but this week, he publicly touted the idea in front of a packed room full of lawmakers, lobbyists and other leaders at the Tennessee Farm Bureau luncheon on Tuesday.

“We as a state can lead the nation once again in telling the federal government that they can keep their money and we’ll just do things the Tennessee way,” Sexton said at the event. “And that should start, first and foremost, with the Department of Education.”

 

The goal is of course not having programs, classrooms, or schools that server those student at all, and the state would be under no influence to do so.

Now, here in the real world, Tennessee taxpayers would continue to have to pay federal taxes, they'd just get much less in return. Fine with me, except the state will turn around and prey on the most needful among them.

The bigger issue is that Republican state governments really do want to reenact 1861 again. They don't want to be a part of a diverse country, they want to be a part of a White supremacist Christian country, where the "Christian" way of giving to the needy comes with God's strings attached, and or bullets.

 

Fine if they lose, but not if it costs us, you know, 5% of the population.

A Pence Sieve Response, Con't

Good morning.

 

Mike Pence is turning state's evidence against Donald Trump.

 

The Justice Department Special Counsel overseeing the criminal investigation into Trump's classified document mess has just subpoenaed former VP Mike Pence to testify, and things just got real interesting as the testimony has been negotiated for months now.

 

Former Vice President Mike Pence has been subpoenaed by the special counsel overseeing probes into former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

It's not immediately clear what information the subpoena from special counsel Jack Smith is seeking, but it follows months of negotiations between federal prosecutors and Pence's legal team.

Smith was appointed in November to oversee the investigation into Trump's potential mishandling of classified documents after leaving the presidency and obstructing the government's efforts to retrieve them -- as well as a separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

A spokesperson for Pence did not respond to a request for comment by ABC News. The special counsel's office also declined to comment.

 

That explains Pence's radio silence in 2023.

 

He's flipping on Trump.

 

Get the popcorn.

Last Call For The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer's debut as Chief Clown of the "Weaponization of Government" subcommittee's first televised hearing did not go as the House GOP planned.

WHEN THE WHITE House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.

That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere to be found in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” releases, which have focused almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds to the social media company. The newly empowered Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now devoting significant resources and time to investigating this supposed “collusion” between liberal politicians and Twitter. Some Republicans even believe the release of the “Twitter Files” is the “tip of the spear” of their crusade against the alleged liberal bias of Big Tech.

But former Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the White House’s Teigen tweet demand was hardly an isolated incident: The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.

“It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”

In interviews with former Twitter personnel, onetime Trump administration officials, and other people familiar with the matter, each source recalled what could be described as a “hotline,” “tipline,” or large Twitter “database” of moderation and removal requests that was frequently pinged by the offices of powerful Democrats and Republicans alike.

The voluminous requests often came from high-ranking political appointees working in different departments, offices, and agencies in the Trump administration. But during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, these types of moderation requests or demands were routinely sent to Twitter by the staff of influential GOP lawmakers — ones with names like Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik.

Oftentimes, requests would demand Twitter stop “shadowbanning” certain conservative accounts, or that the company reinstate banned or suspended right-wing personas. Other times, offices of senior Trump administration officials would send emails seeking to remove tweets that they believed to be “hate speech” or death threats aimed at their principals. And over the years, the knowledgeable sources say, staffers for Republican officials would regularly flag to Twitter content that they believed violated the app’s terms of service or other policies, including on spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

That sentiment was shared by those who’ve worked for Twitter. “Everybody worked the refs,” one source familiar with congressional requests to the social media company said. “Usually with the Republicans, most of the time rather than saying, ‘Why are you taking things down?’ it was, ‘You need to put things back up.’ It was, ‘Put me back, put me back.’ ”

In Teigen’s case, the White House’s attempt to get Twitter to remove criticism of the president was sparked by a late night exchange initiated by Trump. The then-president blasted musician “@johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed wife” for being insufficiently grateful to him for signing the criminal justice reform First Step Act. The White House’s removal request landed on the desk of Anika Collier Navaroli, who testified that her supervisors had informed her the White House wanted Twitter to evaluate the post. ”They wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement,” told the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

It was obvious that the Trump regime worked the Twitter refs time and time again from 2016 to 2020, both before and after Trump got himself banned from social media after using it to foment the January 6th insurrection in 2021. Anybody who looked at this would have known that Twitter would have gotten requests from Republican lawmakers for years, and yet Comer's Clown Crew walked right into this jet intake anyway, on live television.

Worse, the Trump regime demands were not because of dangerous disinformation or potential terrorism issues, it was because it hurt Trump's tender feelings by making him look like the orange buffoon he is.

So yeah, Comer found out the hard way that the Trump regime and his own House GOP colleagues are just as "guilty" of "using government pressure to manipulate free speech".

Oops.

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

The next step after Republicans end affirmative action programs in colleges and universities with an expected Supreme Court ruling this summer is to end diversity in hiring and gutting the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, as Texas is not only ending diversity hiring in state government agencies, it's declaring diversity programs to be illegal, almost certainly giving SCOTUS the future case they'll need to destroy the EEOC for good. 

 

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office is warning state agency and public university leaders this week that the use of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — policies that support groups who have been historically underrepresented or discriminated against — is illegal in hiring.

In a memo written Monday and obtained by The Texas Tribune, Abbott’s chief of staff Gardner Pate told agency leaders that using DEI policies violates federal and state employment laws, and hiring cannot be based on factors “other than merit.”

Pate said DEI initiatives illegally discriminate against certain demographic groups — though he did not specify which ones he was talking about.

“The innocuous sounding notion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others,” Pate wrote.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a moniker used for policies developed to provide guidance in workplaces, government offices and college campuses intended to increase representation and foster an environment that emphasizes fair treatment to groups that have historically faced discrimination. DEI policies can include resources for underrepresented groups, which can include people with disabilities, LGBTQ people and veterans. In hiring, it can include setting diversity goals or setting thresholds to ensure that a certain number of diverse candidates are interviewed. At universities, DEI offices are often focused on helping students of color or nontraditional students stay in school and graduate.

The governor’s directive represents the latest effort by Republican leaders fighting back against policies and academic disciplines that Republicans nationwide have deemed “woke.” DEI, along with critical race theory, has become a target of conservatives who argue that white people are being unfairly treated or characterized in schools and workplaces.

“Rebranding this employment discrimination as ‘DEI’ doesn’t make the practice any less illegal,” Pate wrote. “Further, when a state agency spends taxpayer dollars to fund offices, departments, or employee positions dedicated to promoting forbidden DEI initiatives, such actions are also inconsistent with the law.”

 

Texas is certainly going to get the pants sued off them over this, and that's exactly what they want. I expect other red states to do the same in the months ahead, ending diversity and inclusion efforts for private employers as well.

They're going to gut the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, just like they have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. And once again, doing this during Black History Month sends a clear message to everyone.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

Kentucky Republicans are jumping on the assault on public education pain train in a big way as the General Assembly returns this week, with new legislation that would allow individual parents of schoolkids to sue school districts if they object to any part of their child's curriculum and the district doesn't change it.

 

HB 173 states parents should have the right to make decisions for their child “without obstruction or interference from a public school.” As long as the student meets the compulsory attendance rules under state law, that student should be educated how the parent sees fit, the measure asserts.

Guardians should have the “high duty and right to nurture and direct their children's destiny, including their upbringing and education; mental, emotional, and physical health care; and moral and religious development,” the bill continues.

HB 173 outlines a system for local school boards to receive complaints about violations of parents’ rights. If districts don’t respond according to the process, the parent can sue.

Parents would also be able to review any student well-being surveys, curriculum, books or course syllabi. They would also have the right to consent on their child’s behalf to participate in a number of things, including surveys and regular classroom interactions where a journalist may be present.

Almost every non-emergency health procedure, including mental health sessions with school counselors, would need a parent’s blessing.

Under HB 173, school staff would be required to inform parents if their child starts dressing in a way that doesn’t correspond with their gender or asks to use different pronouns or a name other than their assigned name ― a move that goes against state education guidance on how to best work with transgender students.

Districts would be required to prohibit trainings where teachers would be encouraged to use a student’s chosen name or pronouns, or touch on “critical race theory” topics such as white supremacy.

Schools would also no longer be allowed to require masks or any type of vaccination.

HB 173 also includes language to a previously filed “bathroom ban,” barring trans students from using the restrooms aligned with their gender identity.

Under the measure, which is 27-pages-long, parents would also have the right to have their child spend their day learning the assigned curriculum with “no time spent being indoctrinated into any partisan political position.”

It bars any discussion of gender expression inconsistent with biological sex, sexual orientation or sexual expression, including in classes and from teachers’ and speakers’ personal experiences. Teachers also could not display LGBTQ pride flags.

The bill clarifies teachers can talk about their legal spouse but should not discuss their sex lives with students.

 

I remind you that this bill was introduced, along with a state Constitutional referendum allowing charter schools to get state education money at the direct expense of public schools, at a meeting of the Kentucky House Education Committee which was discussing the state's existing critical teacher shortage. 

The bill doesn't exist to "put the power in the hands of parents, it's there to end public education by making it so litigious to operate a public school district that they can't actually educate kids, instead all your education tax dollars going to constant legal battles and defending parental lawsuits.

Florida's gutting of public education is only the beginning. Kentucky Republicans may actually dismantle the system entirely and surpass even Ron DeSantis.

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

As I've said many times in this series, 2022 was a test run for massive voter nullification and disenfranchisement of tens of millions of voters in hundreds of races where Republicans control the levers of elections coming in 2024. In Texas, for example, Republicans like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are now calling for the entirety of Harris County and Houston to vote again, without any actual evidence of election fraud.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick this week joined other GOP state officials in calling for Harris County to redo its November 2022 election based on claims that voters were turned away due to alleged paper ballot shortages, though Patrick said he has no idea if any voters were actually disenfranchised.

Patrick's comments at a Magic Circle Republican Women's Club event on Monday were first reported by the Texas Tribune.

“How many people went to go vote that didn’t go back? We don’t know,” Patrick said at the event. “So we do need to have a new election.”

Now, let's dissect this.

According to Patrick, actual evidence of election malfeasance is not only non-existent, it's not even necessary for forcing Harris County and its 4.2 million residents to have an entirely new election because the theoretical hypothesis that someone in the county may have not gotten to vote is enough to nullify the entire actual, non-fraudulent vote that already took place.

This is like the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot people saying "Well, your lottery ticket may be worth a billion dollars, but we're not going to pay out because someone out there may have been prevented from buying that winning lottery ticket with the same numbers and it's not fair to them. We have to have a new lottery drawing. Better luck next time!"

Keep in mind Harris County has 4.7 million people in it, roughly the same number of folks as the entire state of Kentucky. Imagine Kentucky saying "Well, we didn't like the way people voted, we have to hold new elections."

It would be absolute chaos. Which brings us to the next paragraph in the story as we resume.

 

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office told the Texas Tribune only a court order could force a redo of an election.

Starting to dawn on you just how bad this is going to get, right? 

Asked how many voters Patrick believes were turned away and based on what evidence, Patrick's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis on Tuesday issued a response to Patrick's comments. "Election deniers will stop at nothing to stay in power, even if it costs us our democracy," he said. "The ongoing attacks on Harris County come from the same playbook that drove extremists to storm the Capitol."

Patrick's comments come a week after Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a similar assertion. Abbott, without citing any evidence or estimate of disenfranchised voters, said a Harris County ballot paper shortage was "so big it may have altered the outcome of elections" and "may necessitate new elections."

In response to Abbott's claim, the Harris County elections office repeated the response it has offered since election night: that while some voting locations did run low on their initial allotment of ballot paper, "supplies of additional paper ballots were delivered to locations throughout Harris County on Election Day."

An election post-mortem report from Tatum's office found that 68 voting locations reported running out of paper, 61 of which received additional deliveries. At nearly one-third of the locations with reported shortages, election workers gave the county conflicting accounts with some saying they did not run out of paper.

According to the report, "many of them provided confusing answers and some declined to speak after reportedly being advised not to do so by the Harris County Republican Party."

Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel denied that claim, saying the party told its election workers: "If they call you, our advice is to talk to them. There's no reason not to."

Siegel added Republican precinct chairs may have discouraged election judges from talking to the county, but the party did not.

Harris County has had a countywide voting system in place since 2019. In the November election, residents were able to vote at any of the county's 782 voting locations on Election Day.

 

Like I said, a test run for stealing 2024.  These assholes are normalizing the notion that the only possible "fair and just remedy" is making millions of Texans vote again because elections where Democrats actually win have to be fraudulent.

Twenty-two Republican candidates who lost their races have filed election contest lawsuits seeking new elections, including County Judge Lina Hidalgo's Republican challenger, Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who lost her race by 18,183 votes.

In November, Mealer quickly accepted the loss, tweeting a concession statement the morning after Election Day.

Mealer then reversed her position, filing an election contest petition on Jan. 6 that included no evidence or estimate of voters she said were disenfranchised. She went on to claim Harris County Elections Administrator Cliff Tatum "suppressed the voting rights of a not statistically insignificant number of Harris County residents residing or voting in high Republican turn-out locations" and "prevented eligible voters from voting.

What these assholes want is a roadmap to getting that court order in 2024 to redo elections in the most populous county in red state America, just ahead in population of Maricopa County in Arizona, and to provide that roadmap to other red states with large blue urban counties.

They're setting the table for massive vote nullification in 2024. Even if the corrupt Roberts Court somehow doesn't buy the legal theory that state legislatures, not voters, should determine presidential electors and elections, GOP-controlled states are going to do whatever it takes to disenfranchise their largest urban counties and cities in order to control local and state races too.

Oh, and the 2024 presidential race too.

To recap, the GOP Governor and Lt. Governor of Texas are calling for new elections in Harris County in order to normalize having the courts step in and nullify the 2024 elections in order to "redo" Democratic candidate wins, and to normalize the idea that "election fraud" doesn't need any actual evidence of fraud.

Imagine a twisted mirror of the Voting Rights Act, where a state like Texas decides that Harris County's election results (and Dallas County, and Bexar County, and...) are considered fraudulent until audited and "cleared" by the state, and that statewide elections (and local County elections) would not be determined until months after the actual election.

Imagine the impact that would have on turnout in those counties.

Again, are you starting to see where all this is headed in 2024 and beyond?

I hope you do. I really do.