Last Call For Our Little European Right-Wing Terrorism Problem

The European right-wing ultra-nationalists are getting very, very troublesome, and getting very, very dangerous to boot, and of course our Good Friend Vladimir is involved.

Anti-terrorism police in northern Italy have seized an air-to-air missile and other sophisticated weapons during raids on far-right extremist groups. 

Three people were arrested, two of them near Forli airport. Neo-Nazi propaganda was also seized, in the raids. 

The raids were part of an investigation into Italian far-right help for Russian-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine, local media said. 

The missile was one of those used by the Qatari army, Italian police said. 

The Turin special police force, called Digos, led the operations, assisted by police in Milan, Varese, Forli and Novara. 

Italian media named those arrested as Fabio Del Bergiolo, 50, an Italian ex-customs officer and far-right Forza Nuova party activist; Alessandro Monti, 42, a Swiss national; and Fabio Bernardi, 51, also Italian. 

The missile appears to be a French-made Matra Super 530 F. 

"During the operation, an air-to-air missile in perfect working order and used by the Qatari army was seized," police said in a statement. 

On 3 July a court in Genoa jailed three men who were found guilty of fighting alongside the Russian-backed separatists who control a large swathe of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 

In the Genoa case, two men - Italian Antonio Cataldo and Albanian-born Olsi Krutani - got terms of two years and eight months. The third, Moldovan citizen Vladimir Vrbitchii, got one year and four months. 

More than 10,000 people have died in fighting since the heavily-armed separatists launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine in April 2014. Skirmishes with Ukrainian government troops continue, but the frontline has remained generally static for more than a year.

Oh yes, there's a war still going on in Ukraine thanks to Putin, and Qatari missiles are ending up in Turin as a direct result.  This would be the kind of thing that maybe the US and UK would be generally involved in stropping, but the guy in the White House is a Russian asset, and the lady in 10 Downing Street is about to be fired in favor of a Gary Busey cosplayer.

Most historians would consider this alarming, but at this point we're just trying to keep the country from devolving into a Second Civil War and it really is taking most of our attention. 

Deportation Nation, Con't

The Trump regime just effectively ended asylum in the US, illegally and in violation of the law and treaties, and frankly they just don't give a damn.

The Trump administration on Monday moved to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register , asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone.

There are some exceptions: If someone has been trafficked, if the country the migrant passed through did not sign one of the major international treaties that govern how refugees are managed (though most Western countries have signed them) or if an asylum-seeker sought protection in a country but was denied, then a migrant could still apply for U.S. asylum.

But the move by President Donald Trump’s administration was meant to essentially end asylum protections as they now are on the southern border, reversing decades of U.S. policy on how refugees are treated and coming as the government continues to clamp down on migrants and as the treatment of those who made it to the country is heavily criticized as inhumane.

Attorney General William Bar said that the United States is “a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed” by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of migrants at the southern border.

“This rule will decrease forum shopping by economic migrants and those who seek to exploit our asylum system to obtain entry to the United States,” Barr said in a statement.

The policy is almost certain to face a legal challenge. U.S. law allows refugees to request asylum when they arrive at the U.S. regardless of how they did so, but there is an exception for those who have come through a country considered to be “safe.” But the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs asylum law, is vague on how a country is determined “safe”; it says “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement.”

Right now, the U.S. has such an agreement, known as a “safe third country,” only with Canada. Under a recent agreement with Mexico, Central American countries were considering a regional compact on the issue, but nothing has been decided. Guatemalan officials were expected in Washington on Monday, but apparently a meeting between Trump and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales was canceled amid a court challenge in Guatemala over whether the country could agree to a safe third with the U.S.
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who has litigated some of the major challenges to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, said the rule was unlawful.

“The rule, if upheld, would effectively eliminate asylum for those at the southern border,” he said. “But it is patently unlawful.”

So the Guatemalan option is off the table for now, and the Trump regime is just shrugging and deciding the law doesn't matter anymore and they'll do whatever they want.  We've reached the point where it just no longer matters to Trump about what the law says or what the courts say.

I'd say something pithy like "At some point we have to do something" but it's clear we're not going to.

The Epstein Scandal Goes Abroad

The Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking scandal just became the major flashpoint in Israel's elections this week as Benjamin Netanyahu, still facing a massive fraud indictment himself, is now demanding government investigations into political opponent Ehud Barak's ties to Epstein's businesses.

Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest is reverberating in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party are calling for a criminal probe into former prime minister Ehud Barak’s personal and business ties with the accused sex trafficker, Israeli media is reporting.

Barak, 77, served as prime minister from 1999 to 2001. This month he formed a new party to run for prime minister against Netanyahu, who called for new elections in September. Once political allies, Barak and Netanyahu have been sparring on social media, with Netanyahu producing a video raising Barak’s relationship to the multimillionaire New York financier, and Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who has given money to Barak, the Times of Israel reported.

Barak was a close friend and business partner with Epstein for years. Now some of those business partnerships are being scrutinized amid questions about Barak’s own source of wealth. The Times reported Saturday that Barak is exploring whether to sever business ties with Epstein, 66, who was charged last week with sex trafficking underage girls.

In 2015, Barak formed a limited partnership company in Israel to invest in a high-tech startup called Reporty, now named Carbyne., which develops video streaming and geolocation software for emergency services, the Times reported. A large part of the investment money was supplied by Epstein.

Barak also received $2.5 million from the Wexner Foundation in 2004 for research, which has never been fully explained, Haaretz reported. Epstein was a member of that foundation.

Speaking on Israel TV’s “Meet the Press,” Saturday, Barak stated he had no idea that Epstein’s charges related to molesting underage girls and defended his business relationship with Epstein.

“He’d served his sentence for soliciting prostitution — the indictment didn’t say she was a minor,” Barak said, adding that he wasn’t the only person who kept his friendship with Epstein after his arrest. Epstein’s circle of associates included the presidents of leading U.S. universities, philanthropists, Nobel-prize-winning scientists and politicians from both American political parties, Barak said.

“The American system itself did not label him as a persona non grata…the secretary who just resigned in the Trump administration was the prosecutor and he said he’d been negligent — so you expect me to have noticed [anything wrong]?” Barak said on the program.

"Everyone was doing it, man!" is one hell of an escuse, no matter what country or party you're in.  I hate to say it, but it's hard to judge who's more corrupt at this point, Barak, or Bibi.

StupidiNews!

• In an epic men's final, Novak Djokovic defeated Roger Federer to claim his fifth Wimbledon title as the historic saga between these two tennis legends entered another chapter.
• According to a new book on the Trump 2016 campaign, Donald Trump was manipulated into picking Mike Pence as his running mate by Karl Rove and Paul Manafort.
• Tropical Depression Barry continues to dump rain on Louisiana and the Mississippi River valley as parts of the state have already seen 15 inches of rain in 48 hours.
• Besieged Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rosello is facing new calls for his resignation after internet chat logs surfaced where Rosello openly fantasized about the assassination of San Juan Mayor Carmen Cruz.
• Anti-vaccine activists have lost a court case in New York to block the state's law eliminating parental exceptions to vaccinations, attorneys says the case will move to the Supreme Court if necessary.

Last Call For It's All About Revenge Now, Con't

Meanwhile, House GOP Intel Committee ranking member Devin Nunes is over at FOX News, openly calling for Mueller and the those who dared to investigate Donald Trump's Russia ties to be jailed.  Screenshot of the story, won't give them the pleasure of a link.

Mueller's team were all "dirty cops" according to Nunes, and if Attorney General Barr doesn't send them to jail, no Republican will trust him again.

This is an outright threat in response to the Dems calling a vote for Barr to face contempt of Congress on Tuesday.

House Democrats will vote next week on criminal contempt charges against Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for failing to comply with a congressional subpoena over the 2020 census, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday.

The vote — the second time a sitting attorney general would be found in criminal contempt by the House — has little real-world impact as Barr almost certainly won't face criminal charges from the Justice Department over efforts to include a citizenship question.

But the symbolic value would be high, as Democrats have already approved a civil contempt resolution against Barr for failing to respond to a subpoena to testify about former special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russia election interference. Mueller will testify before the House Judiciary and Intelligence panels next Wednesday.

While the Supreme Court ruled the administration cannot include the citizenship question on the census, President Donald Trump is still trying to do so by executive order, which will lead to more legal battles.

Robert Mueller is expected to testify on July 24th.  We'll see if that actually happens.

They're Coming For Your Obamacare Again, Con't

Republicans are openly saying they want millions of Americans to lose their health coverage while cheering on the Texas lawsuit contending the ACA's constitutionality, but once again, after nearly ten years of trying to destroy the law, the GOP still has no plans to replace it heading into the 2020 elections.

After a decade of trying to gut Obamacare, Republicans may finally get their wish thanks to a Trump administration-backed lawsuit. Its success would cause chaos not only in the insurance markets but on Capitol Hill. And Republican senators largely welcome it — even if they don’t know what comes next.
“I’m ready for it to succeed,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.). “I would love to get back in and actually deal with health care again.”

“Do I hope the lawsuit succeeds? I do,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “What I wish is we had some idea where we are going if it does succeed, as it looks more and more like it might.”

Even Republicans not known for taking a hard line are eager for a forcing mechanism to take on Obamacare.

“I have a plan that I would be delighted to have Congress pick up and go forward with,” added Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) of a proposal to protect pieces of the law. “Necessity is the mother of acceptance. I hope that we reach that necessity and that would propel my proposal to see a good deal of support.”

Both Cramer and Romney said GOP discussions were picking up about how to step in if the law falls after a U.S. appeals court indicated last week it could kill all or part of the law, though the Supreme Court would have the final say. Democrats and Republicans are also working on a modest package of bills intended to lower health care costs.

But when it comes to major changes to Obamacare, the parties aren’t talking.

Democratic leaders have no intention of working with the GOP since they want the Affordable Care Act to survive. And there’s no reason to think that Senate Republicans could unify on a replacement to the law after previously failing to do so.

“If it did succeed, I would be very concerned,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) of the lawsuit. “I don’t think there’s a plan in place to take care of individuals who’ve been using the exchanges to purchase their insurance or who have been covered under the Medicaid expansion. I’m just hoping the court doesn’t strike it down.”

Democrats are ready to hammer Republicans if the law gets taken down because of the GOP lawsuit. Democrats took back the House last year in large part because of their focus on health care.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) called the GOP’s stance “repeal without a replace.”

“Every plan Republicans have put forward has failed to maintain the protections offered under the current law,” he said. “It's pretty simple: If you care about maintaining protections for people with preexisting conditions, you don’t demand they be taken away.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), a close Schumer ally, added, “They better do something. If not, this is all on them. This is all on Mitch McConnell."

Healthcare is the one area where the Democrats win hands down, and if the GOP lawsuit does win and SCOTUS blows up the ACA, it's all on the Republicans.  They'll never be able to put a plan together in time.

And millions will suffer, a lot of them Trump voters.

We'll see if that's enough to shock them out of their racism...but I doubt it.

Sunday Long Read: It Doesn't Make Census

This week's long read is Charles Bethea's New Yorker profile of Stephanie Hofeller, the estranged daughter of the late GOP master gerrymandering guru Thomas Hofeller, whose death last year led to discovering her father's plans to rig the Census permanently in favor of the Republican Party.

At around half past nine on the last day of September, Stephanie Hofeller was parked at a Speedway in Kentucky, where she lives, when she got a strange sense that she should Google her father, whom she hadn’t seen in more than four years. One of the first results that popped up was an obituary in the Times, which had been published six weeks before. “Holy shit,” Hofeller said to a friend who was in the car with her. “My father’s dead.” She did some more Googling, to make sure it wasn’t a hoax—given her father’s notoriety, she figured it might be. “I remember feeling a lot of things,” Hofeller told me recently. “It’s hard to decide how you feel when you find out a parent you had that kind of deeply fraught history with is dead.” She added, “I’d spent so long considering him a dangerous enemy to me and the country.”

Thomas Hofeller, who died in August, at the age of seventy-five, was raised in San Diego and served in the Navy during the Vietnam War. In the early eighties, after completing a doctorate in political science at Claremont Graduate University, he became the R.N.C.’s data-operations manager. In that position, he began to grasp how the redrawing of political maps could usher in a sweeping tide of Republican power in state legislatures. Congressional redistricting became his specialty; the Times obituary referred to him as “the Michelangelo of the modern gerrymander.” The former congressman Lynn Westmoreland worked closely with Hofeller on Republican redistricting efforts in Georgia between 2000 and 2010. “Redistricting is the science of politics,” Westmoreland told me. “It’s also a blood sport for adults, because it controls ten years and it controls peoples’ lives. It’s the purest form of brass-knuckle politics that there is. And, of the people I worked with over many years, Mr. Hofeller was the go-to guy, the best.” He added, “When you do this for forty years, as Tom did, you’re not just doing it for the moment. You’re trying to prepare for legal challenges, to anticipate what changes could be made, population growth and decline, the winds of the political environment in states and districts. Tom, he understood it all.”

Hofeller preferred to keep the details of his work private and to avoid paper trails. “E-mails are the tool of the devil,” he explained to fellow-operatives. Still, he did leave some documentation behind. About a week and a half after Stephanie learned of her father’s death, she made a trip to her parents’ retirement home, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where her mother, Kathleen, still lives, looking for keepsakes. She later described the visit in a deposition for a lawsuit concerning legislative redistricting in North Carolina. In her father’s bedroom, she found a jewelry box, which had been hers as a child. She also found four external hard drives and eighteen thumb drives that had belonged to her father. One of the drives was labelled “NC Data.” Hofeller took the drives to the hotel where she was staying and began to scan the contents of the devices, which contained some seventy-five thousand files. She found early photographs of her two children—buried treasure, she called them in the deposition—and a music recording that she’d made, as well as letters she’d written. She also found a number of files related to her father’s work.

A couple of weeks after Hofeller’s visit to her parents’ home, Chris Morden, a lawyer in Raleigh who had done estate planning for Thomas and Kathleen Hofeller in 2016, filed a petition to have Kathleen Hofeller deemed legally incompetent. The petition cited Kathleen’s recent victimization in a “gift card payment scheme,” and an alleged attempted transfer of money to India, a country to which Kathleen has no apparent connection. The petition also reported that Kathleen “is believed to be under influence of previously estranged child.” In response to the petition, an interim guardian was appointed.

“There was my mother, with all of her accounts frozen, scared to death, as only a competent person can be in that situation,” Stephanie wrote to me in an e-mail. “How could I proceed? I was not my father’s colleague, not his co-worker, or vetted friend, not even his son, only his daughter and an ordinary citizen—free from the naïveté that Tom Hofeller had ever been an honest man.” In the deposition, Stephanie said that she was worried that many lawyers in Raleigh would be more concerned about her father’s political work than about her mother’s well-being. And so she called the Raleigh office of Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group focussed on government accountability, to ask for a referral. The group was the plaintiff in a gerrymandering lawsuit challenging legislative maps for North Carolina that had been drawn by her father.

It was just a few days before the midterm elections, and the Common Cause office was particularly busy. When Stephanie told the group’s executive director in the state, Bob Phillips, on the phone, that she was Thomas Hofeller’s daughter, he assumed she was going to yell at him and blast the organization’s efforts. “Then, of course, the conversation quickly became something different,” Philips told me. “It wasn’t about our case. It was about her need to get an attorney for a hearing a few days later, for her mother, regarding her father’s estate and a potential guardian that was going to be appointed. She felt like everyone was against her in Raleigh. The people around, connected with her dad, were all against her. She had no one she could really trust.”

Phillips referred her to Jane Pinsky, the person who, as Hofeller recalled, “probably knew more Raleigh lawyers than anyone else on his staff.” Pinsky agreed to help, and she and Hofeller spoke multiple times on the phone. In the course of those conversations, Hofeller expressed her frustration with what her mother was going through and what she saw as the political motivations of those involved. She mentioned a recent column in the Raleigh News & Observer, in which the journalist David Daley, who has written extensively about gerrymandering, was quoted as saying, “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if on a hard drive somewhere in Raleigh Tom Hofeller has another set of gifts for legislators.” In fact, Hofeller told Pinsky, she had multiple hard drives that had belonged to her father. She didn’t know, she says, that the drives could be used in Common Cause’s litigation—the case she knew about, Rucho v. Common Cause, was already on its way to the Supreme Court. But the group, it turned out, had just filed another gerrymandering lawsuit.

On February 7th, a settlement was reached regarding Morden’s petition of incompetency. The interim guardian was dismissed; Kathleen Hofeller agreed to put most of her assets into an irrevocable trust overseen by a neutral trustee. She was not deemed incompetent. (Morden declined to comment for this story; his law partner, Nickolas Sherrill, listed as the attorney on Morden’s petition, did not respond to requests for comment.) Six days later, the plaintiff’s attorneys in Common Cause’s new case, Common Cause v. Lewis, subpoenaed Thomas Hofeller’s old hard drives.

And the rest is our current history.  Chief Justice Roberts scrapped the DoJ's legal defense of the citizenship question based on the Hofeller hard drives, and it may have saved the country...at least for now.

We'll see if it holds.

Deportation Nation, Con't

ICE raids are already under way this morning, and big blue cities are standing up to the Trump regime's terror campaign.

Fear and anxiety spread through immigrant communities nationwide over anticipated federal raids aimed at detaining and deporting thousands of people accused of remaining illegally within the United States.

Immigration reform advocates said that communities around Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco were being targeted by raids expected to start Sunday and last through at least Thursday.

“It’s almost like getting ready for a hurricane – it’s that state of alarm that people are feeling,” said Melissa Taveras of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Coalition. “People are asking, ‘Is it OK for us to go work? Is it OK to take our kids to school?’”

The raids are different from routine Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions, and advocates for immigrant communities say the raids appear designed to sow terror and discord among the approximately 2,000 families expected to be targeted, especially in light of news reports of some detainees dying in custody.

“It terrorizes the community,” said Milli Atkinson, legal director of the San Francisco Immigrant Legal Defense collaborative in San Francisco. “It’s really going to impact our community to see that happen, because with any detention they’re separating the men and the women and the children.”

The Trump administration argues the nation's immigration laws have long been ignored, and that tougher enforcement is necessary because Congress has failed to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The president on Friday said the raids would primarily target immigrants who have already been convicted of other crimes.

In Denver, Mayor Michael Hancock said city police officers would avoid helping ICE agents but said city human service workers were on alert to assist any minor children left behind if their parents are arrested.

In many cases, immigrants who lack legal permission to remain in the United States have minor children who are U.S. citizens. That puts officials in liberal cities like Denver or San Francisco in the tough position of opposing the ICE raids themselves but still having to manage the consequences.

It's that last part that's the key.  Trump is expecting images of misery and fear, to both feed to his base as red meat and to terrify the rest of us.  He's also expecting cities to become overloaded with cases of US citizen kids with parents rounded up by Trump's ICE goons, and having to care for them.

The ICE raids are just the beginning.  Expect them to get much larger and much more violent, with regular immigration checkpoints around the nation.

And the victims won't be limited to just undocumented, either...

Border Line Psychos, Con't

Last week I noted that the Border Patrol had a "secret" Facebook group where employees, agents, and managers freely traded awful racist photos and posts, and that the group's membership easily reached into the thousands.  Now we find out that the head of the Border Patrol, Carla Provost, belonged to that group and posted to it.

In early July, Propublica reported on the existence of “I’m 10-15,” a private Facebook group of nearly 10,000 members named for the Border Patrol code for “aliens in custody.” According to the publication, agents in the group posted a widely circulated photo of a migrant father and daughter face-down in a river along the southern border, suggesting it could have been “edited” by the “dems and liberal parties.” In another post, a photo illustration of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is captioned “Lucky Illegal Immigrant Glory Hole Special Starring AOC.” 

At the time, Vicki Gaubeca, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, suggested the images reflected the palpable misogyny within the agency and Border Patrol’s lack of women agents. Shortly after the ProPublica story published, Provost called the posts “completely inappropriate and contrary to the honor and integrity I see—and expect—from our agents day in and day out.” 

But as The Intercept reported on Friday morning, Provost posted to “I’m 10-15" three months into her tenure as the chief of the agency, though she left the group at an unspecified time before news of the group’s existence broke. In a comparatively benign addition to the group, Provost replied to a post from a commenter noting she’d been promoted as a supervisor after only two years in the field. 

“It was actually 3 years......hard to turn down when they offer it to you......just saying,” she wrote. Carla Provost: a true feminist pioneer.

On top of that, the Border Patrol has now been caught in more bad behavior under Provost's tenure.

An unofficial commemorative coin has been circulating among Border Patrol agents at the U.S./Mexico border, mocking the task of caring for migrant children and other duties that have fallen to agents as families cross into the U.S. 

On the front, the coin declares “KEEP THE CARAVANS COMING” under an image of a massive parade of people carrying a Honduran flag — a caricature of the “caravan” from last fall, which started in Honduras and attracted thousands of people as it moved north. (While the caravan included many women and children, the only visible figures on the coin appear to be adult men.) 

The coin’s reverse side features the Border Patrol logo and three illustrations: a Border Patrol agent bottle-feeding an infant; an agent fingerprinting a teen boy wearing a backwards baseball cap; and a U.S. Border Patrol van. The text along the edge reads “FEEDING ** PROCESSING ** HOSPITAL ** TRANSPORT.” 

The coin appears to poke fun at the fact that many border agents are no longer out patrolling and instead are now caring for and processing migrants — including families and children.

Hysterical.

What's not so funny is that ProPublica's reporting this week on the Border Patrol has touched a nerve, and that the agency now openly considers the investigative journalists there to be a threat.

A senior Border Patrol official, who directs a key intelligence-gathering center, on Thursday circulated an inflammatory opinion article that blasted ProPublica’s reporting on a secret Facebook group for current and former agents and described the news organization as a threat to the agency and its members. 

A link to the article, which specifically castigates ProPublica reporter A.C. Thompson for his articles about the degrading posts in the group, was sent in an email to top intelligence officials at the agency’s headquarters in Washington and to field offices across the country. Sources said other supervisors then shared it widely with agents under their command. 

The article was widely distributed by Michael E. Powell, director of the Customs and Border Protection’s Northern Border Coordination Center, and comes as the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, the CPB, which it oversees, and the Border Patrol have publicly condemned the Facebook posts and launched investigations into the group.

I mean when the guy in the White House constantly and consistently calls the press enemies of the people, why shouldn't the agencies under the executive branch behave any differently?  It was just a year ago that a Maryland newsroom was shot up killing five reporters. Why wouldn't the violence of the Trump regime itself not be directed against those who dare reveal the truth?

The article was published on a website called Law Enforcement Today, and was written by a woman named Dawn Perlmutter, who describes herself as an expert on “symbols, symbolic methodologies, atypical homicide and ritualistic crimes.” 

It alleges that ProPublica’s reporting about the secret Facebook group, which was known as “I’m 10-15,” was part of an “anti-police information operation” that was “calculated to incite hatred against CBP, ICE and DHS officers, provide party-line propaganda for the media and ignite protests to further political agendas.” And it claimed that Thompson, who broke the story about the Facebook group, “essentially doxed CBP officers,” when he published the posts. 

“Thompson’s byline says he covers hate crimes and racial extremism, when in fact, he perpetuates it,” the piece reads. “His irresponsible reporting incites police hatred and endangers officers’ lives under the guise of social justice.”

Really aren't too far away now from ICE or Border Patrol or some other Trump agency hurting or even killing a journalist.  They're already putting kids in cages, and yes, those kids are dying.

We're the bad guys in this story.  This is being done in our name, by the people this country elected, and we continue to tolerate them doing this in our name.

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

When I say Republicans are the party of white supremacy, when I say that white supremacy is in no way a dealbreaker for Republican voters, when I say the stated goal of the Republican party is to end the civil rights era and return the country to white supremacy, a Republican governor literally proclaiming a statewide day to celebrate the founder of the Ku Klux Klan is the evidence that I cite.

Gov. Bill Lee has proclaimed Saturday as Nathan Bedford Forrest Day in Tennessee, a day of observation to honor the former Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader whose bust is on display in the state Capitol.

Per state law, the Tennessee governor is tasked with issuing proclamations for six separate days of special observation, three of which, including the July 13 Forrest Day, pertain to the Confederacy.

Lee — and governors who have come before him — are also required by state law to proclaim Jan. 19 as Robert E. Lee Day, honoring the commander of the Confederate Army, as well as June 3 Confederate Decoration Day, otherwise known as Confederate Memorial Day and the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

"I signed the bill because the law requires that I do that and I haven’t looked at changing that law," Lee said Thursday.

He declined to say whether he believed state law should be changed to no longer require the governor to issue such proclamations or whether he had reservations about doing so.

A previous effort by Democrats to do so was unsuccessful.

"I haven’t even looked at that law, other than knowing I needed to comply with it, so that’s what I did," Lee said. "When we look at the law, then we’ll see."

Lee signed the proclamation Wednesday.

Hasn't even occurred to the Governor of Tennessee in 2019 that a law mandating the declaration of a statewide celebration of a Confederate traitor and, I can't stress this enough, basically the founder of the Klan, that he might want to, you know, not do this.

And yes, Democratic Gov. Bill Haslam also declared this day in 2015, because he had to by law.  He also said that he didn't agree with the law and wanted to change it.

Go to hell, Bill Lee.  Join Forrest down there and burn for a few millennia.

The Daughter Of The Nameless One

Something funny happened on the way to Liz Cheney's coronation and her dad's old seat in the Senate: former Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis has decided to jump into the race before Cheney.

Former Rep. Cynthia Lummis announced a bid for Senate in Wyoming Thursday, becoming the first Republican to jump into the race and setting up a potential clash with her successor in the House, Rep. Liz Cheney.
Lummis, also a former two-term state treasurer, was first elected to the House in 2008 and retired after the 2016 election. She was the only woman to serve in the conservative House Freedom Caucus when the group first formed in 2015.

Cheney, meanwhile, quickly rose through the GOP ranks to become the third-ranking member of leadership in just her second term, and also retains deep relationships in the party as the daughter of the former vice president.

Lummis told reporters Thursday she spoke with Cheney before announcing her bid, and said the race to replace retiring Sen. Mike Enzi will be a “real barn-burner” if the two women face off in a primary.

“She needs to make her decision. I have made mine,” Lummis said. “This is Wyoming's Senate seat. Nobody has dibs on it.”

Lummis is clearly throwing down the gauntlet to her former and potential future rival Cheney, whom she once derided as the “shiny new pony” of Wyoming politics for mounting a short-lived primary against Enzi six years ago — a move Lummis called “poor form.”

But Cheney isn’t sweating Lummis’ entrance into the race, telling POLITICO recently she wouldn’t base her decision on anyone else’s moves.

In a private poll, conducted for an outside group by the GOP firm The Tarrance Group in late June, Cheney led Lummis, 56 percent to 34 percent, among GOP primary voters in a hypothetical matchup, according to a polling memo obtained by POLITICO.

It'll be a fight for sure.

One I hope both of them lose...

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

In order to deport the hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, the Trump regime is set to ship the vast majority of them to Guatemala under a new agreement.

The Trump administration is on the verge of signing a “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala, sources have confirmed to the Prospect. Asylum seekers attempting to enter the United States would be forced to file in Guatemala instead, on the grounds that it would be the first “safe” country they arrived in. Because most asylum seekers are coming from the south, this would allow the U.S. to send thousands of asylum seekers at the southern border back to Guatemala, and render them ineligible to apply for refugee status in the U.S.

Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales is scheduled to be in Washington on Monday, and an announcement of the agreement could be made then. Spokespeople for Morales have denied that the agreement is the purpose of the visit, but said that there is hope that there can be a signing ceremony.

Immigrant rights and refugee activists, as well as lawmakers, have expressed alarm that Guatemala, itself a country wracked with bouts of violence and its own population of asylum seekers, would be considered a “safe” country for migrants in search of refuge. Civil and human rights groups have suggested they would sue to block the agreement, saying it would violate international law. Three former foreign ministers have asked Guatemala’s Constitutional Court to prevent Morales from signing an agreement, arguing that it would be illegal under Guatemalan law.

“The whole idea [is] that we can take people from Honduras and El Salvador and fly them to Guatemala, where they’re absolutely in worse shape, they don’t have friends or family or funds, so they’re much more vulnerable, so they’re going from desperation to desperation,” said Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who has been a leader on border issues in the Senate.

The administration’s desire to sign a safe third country agreement with Guatemala has been known for some time. On June 17, Trump tweeted that Guatemala “is getting ready to sign a Safe-Third [sic] Country Agreement.” Guatemala’s interior minister, Enrique Degenhart, denied that the two countries had reached a deal, though negotiations are ongoing. Then, again this month, Trump said that Guatemala would be signing a safe third country agreement.

It’s just not credible to call Guatemala “safe,” says Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration and criminal justice advocacy organization.

“This requires suspending objective truth,” Schulte says. “I think people are pretty unprepared for the U.S. declaring one of the most dangerous countries in the world … that’s driving the refugee crisis, if we just say it’s totally safe and lie about it for our benefit, that would be unbelievably tragic.”

Trump of course thinks with this he can eliminate southern border crossings by asylum-seekers, or just ship them all to Guatemala anyway.  Ideally, he'd start deporting people to Guatemala even if they weren't from there to begin with.

It'll fail miserably, but there's a lot of death and suffering he can cause even if he is outsourcing the ethnic cleansing.

Dropping One Evil Scheme For A Far Worse One

The Trump regime announced Thursday that it was giving up on the matter of putting a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, instead he announced a far more sinister plan to disenfranchise millions of black, Hispanic, young, and Democratic voters by using Census data to only count "eligible voters" for redistricting purposes.

President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he is dropping his administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, an abrupt reversal that came after Trump repeatedly insisted he would push ahead with trying to add the question.

Rather than add the question to the 2020 census, which will go to every household in America, Trump instructed other executive agencies to immediately provide all of their citizenship records to the Department of Commerce, which oversees the census. Census Bureau officials authored a memo last year arguing they could better collect citizenship data using existing government administrative records. 

Although the Trump administration has said since 2017 it needed the citizenship question for better enforcement of the Voting Rights Act, critics have long said that rationale is fake. At his Thursday announcement, Trump seemed to confirm that. He did not mention the Voting Rights Act and instead focused on how the data could be used to draw districts based only on the citizen voting-age population.

“Some states may want to draw state and local legislative districts based upon the voter eligible population. Indeed the same day the Supreme Court handed down the census decision, it also said it would not review certain types of districting decisions, which could encourage states to make such decisions based on voter eligibility,” he said.

“With today’s order, we will conduct all of the information we need in order to conduct an accurate census and to make responsible decisions about public policy, voting rights, and representation in Congress,” he added.

Congressional seats allocated to states and districts are drawn based on the total population, and switching to using only the citizen voting-age population would benefit non-Hispanic whites. States could still use citizenship data the Trump administration obtains through other means to draw districts this way.

In other words, under this plan, states would be free to create districts based on "eligible voters" rather than "people who live there." It would allow states to tailor districts to the point where even more Democratic voters could be packed into one district and leave the other districts in the state with a makeup that favors Republicans even more, because they'd be using actual voter data to do it.

In other words, they've dropped the pretense and are now directly advocating using state eligibility formulas to make new hyper-gerrymandered districts to harm Democrats.  The situation in Ohio, where Democrats won half the vote but have only 4 of 16 districts, or North Carolina, where Democrats actually got a majority of the House votes but 3 of 13 districts, will now become the new normal. 

Imagine NC Democrats getting another majority of total House votes but only two Democratic Representatives out of 13.  The Supreme Court just ruled that's okay and that the federal courts have no business interfering in that.

Imagine Texas, which could have as many as 40 Congressional districts in 2022, with Democrats getting something like 48%-50% of the House vote, but only having 8-10 Democrats.  Imagine Florida, Wisconsin, Virginia, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Missouri, all gerrymandering one or two Democrats right out of their districts on a new permanent basis.

It would be a permanent 20-seat shift to the GOP.  Maybe more.

That's the point.

The Acosta Of Failure

Trump regime Labor Secretary Alex Acosta has failed the one ironclad law of the Trump regime: he made Dear Leader look like an idiot, so now he's being forced out.

Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta is stepping down from his post, just two days after he held a news conference to defend a plea deal that he brokered for wealthy sex offender Jeffrey Epstein while serving as a U.S. attorney in Florida more than a decade ago.

Acosta, a 50-year-old Harvard-educated lawyer, came newly under fire for the lenient 2008 plea deal after Epstein was re-arrested July 6 in New York City and charged with sex trafficking. Under the earlier plea agreement, Epstein served only 13 months of an 18-month term and was permitted daily furloughs to go to the office. Epstein also was required to register as a sex offender and to pay restitution to his underage victims.

Things began to unravel for Acosta in November, when the Miami Herald published a lengthy reexamination of the case, and accelerated in February, when a district court judge ruled that the 2008 plea deal violated the Crime Victims Rights Act because Acosta never revealed the terms of the deal to Epstein's victims before it was finalized. Also in February, the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Acosta’s prosecution team committed professional misconduct in its handling the Epstein case.

Key details of Acosta's plea agreement with Epstein were known to senators at the time Acosta was confirmed as labor secretary, though initially these seemed minor compared to domestic abuse allegations against Trump’s first pick for labor secretary, Andy Puzder. Acosta defended his actions at a congressional hearing this past April, saying he entered the case only after a state grand jury recommended that only one charge be filed against Epstein — a course of action that would have resulted in no jail time for Epstein, no restitution to victims, and no registration as a sex offender.

Acosta went down because his press conference defending his plea deal with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was an absolute disaster.

Acosta, who at the time served as the U.S attorney in south Florida, said in a news conference that his office intervened in the case after state prosecutors failed to secure a plea deal that would have resulted in jail time for Epstein and give justice to his victims.

"Times have changed, and coverage of this case has certainly changed," Acosta said, adding, "the facts are being overlooked."

“I wanted to help them, that is why we intervened, and that’s what the prosecutors of my office did," he said. "They insisted that he go to jail and put the world on notice that he was and is a sexual predator."

Acosta added: "Epstein's actions absolutely deserve a stiffer sentence."

Acosta secured a federal non-prosecution agreement with Epstein as part of the plea deal, which critics have blasted as too lenient.

"I think what they would find is that the office acted appropriately," Acosta said at the news conference when asked about the criticism. He also pushed back against an assessment that he violated the law by not informing Epstein's victims about the non-prosecution agreement.

Calling the case "complex," Acosta argued that he and the other federal prosecutors were following Justice Department policy. They waited until they secured the plea deal with a provision that would require Epstein to pay restitution to his victims before notifying them, he said, in case the deal fell apart and the defense tried to use any payments as a way to undermine the victims' credibility.

The labor secretary's role in the administration has come under scrutiny after Epstein, 66, was arrested over the weekend and charged Monday with sex trafficking of minors in New York and Florida from at least 2002 through 2005. Epstein has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

I was convinced Acosta was going to survive until this press conference.  Trump used his usual "We'll see" hedge afterwards, indicating that Acosta didn't discharge his only actual duty, insulating Trump from the Epstein fallout.  This morning, Trump fired Acosta.  Even Republicans were glad to see Acosta gone.

Of course, the real problem is that Acosta was confirmed by these same Republicans in the first place.

Bonus StupidiNews:  Acosta's replacement, Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella, is a friend of disgraced lobbyist and criminal Jack Abramoff and a child labor "enthusiast".

StupidiNews!

• Thousands of Louisiana residents have evacuated from low-lying areas as Hurricane Berry threatens to dump up to 20 inches of rain on the state and head up the Mississippi River valley.
• The US Navy will escort oil tankers in and out of the Strait of Hormuz after Iranian ships reportedly sailed close to British tankers on Wednesday.
• Donald Trump is demanding that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Facebook's proposed Libra become subjected to strict federal and international banking regulations.
• Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is considering sending his son to the US as the country's next Ambassador to Washington.
• Google and game developer Blizzard are teaming up to let European Starcraft II players take on its AlphaStar AI in competition.