Last Call For The Big Lie, Yeezus Edition

I'd safely say we've reached the point where people need to start being arrested on federal election tampering and seditious conspiracy charges for the 2020 Big Lie, including, apparently, Kanye West's publicist.

 

Weeks after the 2020 election, a Chicago publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West traveled to the suburban home of Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker who was facing death threats after being falsely accused by former President Donald Trump of manipulating votes. The publicist knocked on the door and offered to help.

The visitor, Trevian Kutti, gave her name but didn’t say she worked for West, a longtime billionaire friend of Trump. She said she was sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.

Freeman refused. This story of how an associate of a music mogul pressured a 62-year-old temporary election worker at the center of a Trump conspiracy theory is based on previously unreported police recordings and reports, legal filings, and Freeman’s first media interview since she was dragged into Trump’s attempt to reverse his election loss.

Kutti did not respond to requests for comment. Her biography for her work at the Women’s Global Initiative, a business networking group, identifies her as a member of “the Young Black Leadership Council under President Donald Trump.” It notes that in September 2018, she “was secured as publicist to Kanye West” and “now serves as West’s Director of Operations.”

When Kutti knocked on Freeman's door on Jan. 4, Freeman called 911. By then, Freeman said, she was wary of strangers.

 

I mean, at this point, Kanye West's publicist threatened an election worker with arrest if she didn't confess to imaginary election fraud charges in order to help Trump overthrow Biden's election. 

It's prison time for all the kids.

An officer arrived and spoke with Kutti, who described herself as a “crisis manager,” according to the police incident report.

Kutti repeated that Freeman “was in danger” and had “48 hours” before “unknown subjects” turned up at her home, the report said. At the officer’s suggestion, the women agreed to meet at a police station. The officer’s report did not identify the man accompanying Kutti.

Inside the station, Kutti and Freeman met in a corner, according to footage from a body camera worn by an officer present at the meeting. Reuters obtained the video through a public-records request.

“I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti is heard telling Freeman in the recording. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom," she said, "and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”

“You are a loose end for a party that needs to tidy up,” Kutti continued. She added that “federal people” were involved, without offering specifics.

According to Freeman, Kutti told her that she was going to put a man named “Harrison Ford” on speakerphone. (Freeman said the man on the phone wasn’t the actor by the same name.) Kutti said the man had “authoritative powers to get you protection,” the bodycam footage shows.

At that point, Kutti can be heard asking the officer to give them privacy. The body camera did not capture a clear recording of the conversation that followed after the officer moved away from the two women.

Kutti and the man on the speakerphone, over the next hour, tried to get Freeman to implicate herself in committing voter fraud on Election Day. Kutti offered legal assistance in exchange, Freeman said.

“If you don't tell everything,” Freeman recalled Kutti saying, “you're going to jail.”

Growing suspicious, Freeman said she jumped up from her chair and told Kutti: “The devil is a liar,” before calling for an officer.

Later at home, Freeman said, she Googled Kutti’s name and discovered she was a Trump supporter.

Police say they did not investigate the incident further.

 

I mean it's right here on the police bodycam, people.

Police bodycam video recorded on Jan. 4, 2021, shows Trevian Kutti, a publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West, telling a Georgia election worker who former President Trump falsely accused of manipulating votes that she was in imminent danger https://t.co/AeF1I18mdJ pic.twitter.com/ott7ohVQnI

— Reuters (@Reuters) December 10, 2021

 

At some point, justice has to be served or the Republic is lost, folks.

 

The Road To Gilead: Endgame, Con't

A Texas state judge has ruled the "bounty hunting" scheme in the state GOP's effective ban of abortion unconstitutional, which is good because the Supreme Court won't block the horrible law at all.

The enforcement mechanism for Texas’s abortion ban, which is the most restrictive in the nation and effectively outlaws the procedure, violates the Texas constitution, a state judge ruled Thursday.

While a win for abortion rights advocates, the narrow decision by District Judge David Peeples of Austin does not include an injunction that would halt litigation against doctors or others who “aid or abet” an abortion. Texas Right to Life, an antiabortion group that supported the legislation, said it will appeal the ruling. Meanwhile, according to abortion providers, the law, known as S.B. 8, remains in effect, continuing a near-total ban on abortion before many people know they’re pregnant at six weeks.

A spokeswoman for Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four abortion clinics in Texas, said it will not resume services until an injunction is granted.

“We are so grateful to Judge Peeples for his ruling today,” Jackie Dilworth shared in an emailed statement. “We couldn’t agree more: SB 8 IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL.”

The law’s teeth, a $10,000 award to be paid by the defendant for any successful lawsuit brought against an abortion provider, is unconstitutional for several reasons, according to the judge: Authority would be in the hands of private citizens, including people unaffected by abortions who cannot take money from a person who hasn’t harmed them in any way. The lawsuits stemming from the ban would also subvert due process, Peeples wrote.

The judge considered the other possible scenarios that such an unusual enforcement tactic could be deployed, offering examples of laws that swap the words about abortions for gun owners or bakery owners who refuse to decorate a cake with a message they believe is offensive.

“Pandora’s Box has already been opened a bit, and time will tell,” he wrote.

 

It's something, but the Roberts Court refuses to do anything about the law still. 

The Supreme Court on Friday left in place Texas’ ban on most abortions, though it ruled that clinics in the state can sue over the most restrictive abortion law in the nation.

The decision, little more than a week after the court signaled it would roll back abortion rights and possibly overturn its landmark Roe v. Wade decision, was greeted with dismay by abortion rights supporters.

They said the outcome, by limiting which state officials can be sued by the clinics, did not provide a path to effectively block the law.

“The Supreme Court has essentially greenlit Texas’s cynical scheme and prevented federal courts from blocking an unconstitutional law,” the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents the Texas clinics, said on Twitter.

Again, the clock at this point is just ticking down to a late June/July 4th SCOTUS ruling that allows states to ban abortion, and two dozen of them will, including Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Abortions will continue, just not with any safety. A lot of women will die.

But that was always the point.

Birth control is next, and then so are civil rights.  Expect to see a lot of "There is no constitutional right to..." in the years ahead.

On the road to Gilead.

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

Georgia Republicans in the state legislature are openly using the powers they gave themselves earlier this year to quietly purge Black Democratic election officials from the state's county election boards and are replacing them with white Republicans, and that's basically the entire story.

Protesters filled the meeting room of the Spalding County Board of Elections in October, upset that the board had disallowed early voting on Sundays for the Nov. 2 municipal election. A year ago, Sunday voting had been instrumental in boosting turnout of Black voters.

But this was an entirely different five-member board than had overseen the last election. The Democratic majority of three Black women was gone. So was the Black elections supervisor.

Now a faction of three white Republicans controlled the board – thanks to a bill passed by the Republican-led Georgia legislature earlier this year. The Spalding board’s new chairman has endorsed former president Donald Trump’s false stolen-election claims on social media.

The panel in Spalding, a rural patch south of Atlanta, is one of six county boards that Republicans have quietly reorganized in recent months through similar county-specific state legislation. The changes expanded the party’s power over choosing members of local election boards ahead of the crucial midterm Congressional elections in November 2022.

The unusual rash of restructurings follows the state's passage of Senate Bill 202, which restricted ballot access statewide and allowed the Republican-controlled State Election Board to assume control of county boards it deems underperforming. The board immediately launched a performance review of the Democratic-leaning Fulton County board, which oversees part of Atlanta.

The Georgia restructurings are part of a national Republican effort to expand control over election administration in the wake of Trump’s false voter-fraud claims. Republican-led states such as Florida, Texas and Arizona have enacted new curbs on voter access this year. Backers of Trump’s false stolen-election claims are running campaigns for secretary of state - the top election official - in battleground states. read more And some Republicans in Wisconsin are seeking to eliminate the state’s bipartisan election commission and threatening its members with prosecution.

The stakes are high in Georgia, which last year backed a Democrat for president for the first time since 1992. Its first-term Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock will be up for reelection in 2022, a contest that could prove pivotal to which party controls Congress. The governor’s race next year pits incumbent Republican Brian Kemp against Trump-endorsed candidate David Perdue in a primary. The winner will likely face Democrat Stacey Abrams, a voting rights advocate. Both Warnock and Abrams are Black.

The county board restructurings and statewide voting restrictions, Democrats and voting-rights groups say, represent the most sweeping changes in decades to Georgia’s electoral system. Until 2013, Georgia elections operated under federal oversight to ensure fair participation for Black voters in this once-segregated Southern state.

Such obviously racist purging of multiple county election boards of Black folk in Georgia is precisely what the Voting Rights Act's pre-clearance section was supposed to stop right up until Chief Justice (and Chief Racist) John Roberts murdered it in 2013.

So, this will continue in states like Georgia and Wisconsin and Michigan and Arizona, and I expect in 2023 we're going to see more than a few Republicans seated in the House who will have gotten fewer votes than their Democratic opponents, but who will be declared the winners anyway, paving the way for the same scenario to play out in January 2025.

No better voter suppression than elections that literally don't matter because Republicans declare their candidates the winner anyway.

StupidiNews!

• Former TV star Josh Duggar was convicted on two federal felony child pornography charges on  Thursday and faces up to 40 years in prison.
• Donald Trump faces a January 7th deposition in New York's case against the Trump Organization, as NY Attorney General Tish James has dropped her gubernatorial bid to pursue the case.
• At least 53 people are dead in a major truck accident in Mexico as dozens of Central American migrants were killed when the truck carrying them flipped over near Tuxtla Guitierrez, Chiapas.
• President Biden is assuring Ukraine President Zelensky that the US will support the country NATO bid if it makes one, but not send US troops should Russia invade.
• Several northern states have deployed the National Guard to deal with another spike in COVID delta variant hospitalizations, where New York, Pennsylvania and Maine hospitals are full.
  

Last Call For Building Back Better, Con't

A new NPR/Marist poll finds that a majority of Americans approve of the Democrats' accomplishments in 2021, namely the infrastructure bill (56%), the stimulus checks (80% of the 62% of Americans who say they got them), and the child tax credit payments of $300 per month (79% of the 59% of Americans who are parents of kids under 18).

The bad news is that Biden's Build Back Better plan has only 41% support, with a full 25% unsure of what's even in the plan at all, with 61% of Americans saying the country is headed in the wrong direction (88% of Republicans and two-thirds of independents). NPR seems to think the problems are inflation and bad messaging.

Americans don't feel the direct payments or expanded child tax credits doled out earlier this year helped them much, according to the latest NPR/Marist poll, and they don't see Democrats' signature legislation as addressing their top economic concern — inflation.

Additionally, they're down on the job President Biden is doing, don't give him much credit for the direct payments or tax credits, and have soured on the direction of the country.

The results, out Thursday, come as Democrats prepare a nationwide push to sell voters on their policies ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, when the party will defend its slim majorities in both the House and the Senate.

Americans do mostly endorse the new infrastructure law but are less supportive of Democrats' Build Back Better bill that has passed the House. And while that legislation would expand the social safety net, survey respondents weren't convinced that it would help people like them.

"They [Democrats] don't have a unified message for what they're doing, and that does not bode well for the party," said Barbara Carvalho, director of the Marist Poll.

 

It certainly doesn't help when all of NPR's coverage of Democrats is either "Manchin and Sinema are against the Biden bill", "Vice President Harris is a weird loser who would lose to Mayor Pete" or  "Nancy Pelosi has lost control".

Just saying.

The Rent Is Too Damn High, Cincy Edition

Cincinnati is absolutely doing the right thing when it comes to trying to create affordable housing and increase homeownership and community stability: selling soon-to-be foreclosed properties to rental tenants already living there rather than to billion-dollar corporate landlords.

The Port of Greater Cincinnati is buying nearly 200 homes with the goal of selling each property to the family living there as renters. It's an unusual move aimed at preventing a large investor from swooping in to evict tenants and raise the rent.

"We didn't go looking for this, it came to us," said Laura Brunner, president and CEO of The Port.

Los Angeles-based Raineth Housing is foreclosing on the 194 properties, and The Port was one of about a dozen bids to buy the portfolio of homes.

"We know for a fact that some of the potential buyers had already told tenants 'Hey, get prepared to move as of January 1, because we're going to start evictions and raise the rents,' " Brunner says.

The Port will keep rent at the same level while partnering with local nonprofits to get residents ready to purchase each property.

"Some of them probably already have the capability of buying, they just haven't had an opportunity because there's so few homes available in that price range," Brunner says. "Others will need to go through homeownership training and perhaps work on their credit score [or] identify sources for down payment assistance."

Nonprofit partners include Working in Neighborhoods, Price Hill Will, Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority, Talbert House, Legal Aid and more.

The Port is taking on about $14.5 million in debt for the project. Brunner says that's part of what makes this "unprecedented" — most affordable housing projects require significant public subsidy, but The Port can take on these properties on their own financial strength.

Brunner says "institutional investors" are becoming more common: 1 in 6 home sales in Hamilton County in the second quarter of this year were by large investors.

"We see these investors take an affordable home ownership opportunity and convert it into a higher price rental unit," Brunner says. "That's bad all the way around — bad for the neighbors, bad for the renters that don't have somebody that's attentive to their needs, that lives out of town."

 

That 1 in 6 number is almost certainly much higher now. Corporations are turning to the oldest, most valuable asset in the books: land. And they realize that if they can buy and flip every home on the area, then they control the entire political, economic, financial, and cultural landscape. No politician is going to mess with a corporation that literally owns a double-digit percentage of the county's residential real estate.

It's the return of the company town.

It's a tiny drop in the bucket to fight back, but at least Cincinnati is doing something about it.

Sadly, in the years ahead I expect this to only get far worse, and for most Americans to be priced out of living much of anywhere. When the only landlord in town is a faceless corporation

Ban 'Em, Burn 'Em Texas Style, Con't

Texas school districts are running scared of Republican lawmakers and pulling books from school libraries in a pre-emptive and futile effort to spare themselves the coming wrath of the stupid.

A Texas school district pre-emptively pulled more than 400 books from its libraries for review following an inquiry from a Republican state lawmaker.

North East Independent School District in San Antonio said it determined its libraries contained 414 books on a list of roughly 800 targeted by state Rep. Matt Krause. Krause, who chairs the House General Investigating Committee, has asked school officials to search their campuses for copies of the books from the list and respond with how many they have, among other questions such as how the books were paid for.

The school district said in a statement Tuesday that it was reviewing the books “out of an abundance of caution” to “ensure they did not have any obscene or vulgar material in them.”

“Most of those are appropriate and will stay on our library shelves as is, however, some may contain content that needs further review to ensure the books are accessible based on age appropriateness,” Aubrey Chancellor, executive director of communications, said in the statement. “For us, this is not about politics or censorship, but rather about ensuring that parents choose what is appropriate for their minor children.”

The books featured on the list are both nonfiction and fiction, and many cover issues such as race and racial equality, gender equality, identity and sexual orientation, as well as topics such as teen sexuality, pregnancy and abortion.

The list includes some well-known and lauded books such as “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Confessions of Nat Turner” by William Styron and “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving.

Chancellor told NBC News the district had already been in the process of reviewing its books after deeming one book inappropriate last year and has looked into the age appropriateness of others. She said the district was being proactive and described Krause’s list as a “jumping off point.”

“When I look at some of those titles on there, they in no way are going to be inappropriate,” she said. “They’re going to be absolutely reviewed and back on the shelves. So, you know, maybe all of them may end up going back on our shelves. But we just want to do our due diligence.”

 

It's possible that the school is right and the books will be back up.

 

Right until Texas Republicans start banning and burning them. We know how this ends, folks. It's not going to be pretty when it happens, either.

 

And it's just the start.

StupidiNews!

• A new preparedness study by Johns Hopkins university finds no country with a passing score on measures to face the next pandemic.
• The US Senate has voted 52-48 to block President Biden's vaccine mandate under the Congressional Review Act, but the vote has little chance to pass the House or Biden's signature.
• The FDA has authorized the use of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 antibody treatment for use in immunodeficient patients or those who would suffer side effects from the vaccine.
• Vice President Harris is spearheading a national effort to lower infant mortality rates, particularly among Black women in the US.
• With less than a day to spare before being pulled, Google has reached a multi-year deal with streaming device company Roku to provide YouTube and YouTubeTV apps on Roku devices.
  

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

Conservative groups remain unable to find the "massive voting fraud by Democrats" in swing states like Wisconsin because it never existed, and even the most diehard Trump liars are finding themselves with no evidence and having to admit that fact.

A 10-month-long review of Wisconsin’s 2020 election conducted by a conservative group in the state found no signs of widespread or significant election fraud, according to a new report of its findings, further disproving continued baseless allegations of election fraud as the battleground state undergoes a contentious partisan election audit.

The investigation by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) found “no evidence of widespread voter fraud,” which it defined as “an intentional effort to subvert the election” by preventing voters who support a specific candidate from voting or having their vote counted, “attempting to procure votes that were never cast” or “falsely increasing” one candidate’s vote share.

The investigation, which examined nearly 20,000 ballots and 29,000 absentee ballot envelopes alongside other analysis methods, found “limited” evidence of individuals casting ballots when ineligible to do so, such as 130 reported instances of registered felons voting and 42 reported ballots from deceased voters.

Despite claims on the far right that link election fraud to voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems, WILL found “no evidence of significant problems with voting machines” and noted Democrats performed “worse than expected” in areas that used Dominion machines.

The group also struck down right-wing claims of “ballot dumping” that artificially inflated President Joe Biden’s vote total.

The investigation did have numerous criticisms with how the state’s election was run, taking aim at ballot drop boxes, how state voter rolls were maintained and private funding that went to Democratic-leaning areas, and contended there were many votes cast “that did not comply with existing legal requirements” for Wisconsin elections.

That being said, WILL noted there’s little to no evidence showing that voters who cast those ballots “did anything intentionally wrong” and they were likely just following election officials’ advice, and even if some state rules were not correctly followed, that is not cause for throwing out those ballots or a basis to “infer fraud.”

“There was no evidence of widespread voter fraud. In all likelihood, more eligible voters cast ballots for Joe Biden than Donald Trump,” WILL’s report concluded. “We found little direct evidence of fraud, and for the most part, an analysis of the results and voting patterns does not give rise to an inference of fraud.”

 

The sour grapes are enough to strip paint off a prison bus.

 

Notice that their major complaint is "ways in which more Democrats are voting" and that their recommendation is abolishing that. 

Which is the real point of the exercise.

The Merkel Era Ends

Germany's next Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, takes office today and with it comes the end of the Angela Merkel era after 16 years and four US presidents.

Angela Merkel was assured of a place in the history books as soon as she became Germany’s first female chancellor on Nov. 22, 2005.

Over the next 16 years, she was credited with raising Germany’s profile and influence, working to hold a fractious European Union together, managing a string of crises and being a role model for women.

Now that near-record tenure is ending with her leaving office at age 67 to praise from abroad and enduring popularity at home. Her designated successor, Olaf Scholz, is expected to take office Wednesday.

Merkel, a former scientist who grew up in communist East Germany, is bowing out about a week short of the record for longevity held by her one-time mentor, Helmut Kohl, who reunited Germany during his 1982-1998 tenure.

While Merkel perhaps lacks a spectacular signature achievement, the center-right Christian Democrat came to be viewed as an indispensable crisis manager and defender of Western values in turbulent times.

She served alongside four U.S. presidents, four French presidents, five British prime ministers and eight Italian premiers. Her chancellorship was marked by four major challenges: the global financial crisis, Europe’s debt crisis, the 2015-16 influx of refugees to Europe and the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s undeniable that she’s given Germany a lot of soft power,” said Sudha David-Wilp, the deputy director of the German Marshall Fund of the United States’ Berlin office. “Undoubtedly she’s elevated Germany’s image in the world.”

“When she first came onto the scene in 2005, a lot of people underestimated her, but she grew in stature along with Germany’s role in the world,” David-Wilp added. Others in Europe and beyond “want more of an active Germany to play a role in the world — that may not have been the case before she was in office, necessarily.”

In a video message at Merkel’s final EU summit in October, former U.S. President Barack Obama thanked her for “taking the high ground for so many years.”

“Thanks to you, the center has held through many storms,” he said.

 

I've only been here on ZVTS for 13 years, by comparison. Scholz has enormous shoes to fill and right off the bat there's a good chance he'll be facing a massive refugee crisis should things go badly in Ukraine, along with COVID Omicron sweeping across Europe, and growing violent protests over vaccine mandates in the EU.

 

With Merkel, the heart of the European Union project, out of the way, it's anyone's guess as to what happens next.

In Defense Of The Republic

House Republicans sure have no issue working with Democrats when it comes to nearly $800 billion in Pentagon spending, and House Democrats have no problem working with the GOP to spend a crapload of money when they want to, deficits be damned.

The National Defense Authorization Act, the annual must-pass legislation that sets the policy agenda and authorizes almost $770 billion in funding for the Department of Defense, passed in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night. 

The bill now moves to the Senate, where it will likely be voted on later this week, before it can be signed into law by President Joe Biden. 

The bill passed with strong bipartisan support, with a final vote of 363-70, with 169 Democrats and 194 Republicans voting for the bill, while 51 Democrats and 19 Republicans voted against it. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the only member to not vote. 

The final version of the bill, which leadership from both chambers have agreed to, contains changes to how sexual assault and harassment are prosecuted and handled within the military, a 2.7% pay increase for military service members and Defense Department civilian employees, and $300 million in military aid to the Ukrainian Security Assistance Initiative, adding $50 million more than what was proposed in the budget request, summaries of the bill's text from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees stated. 

The sweeping bill targets issues that have been top-of-mind for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin since he took the helm of the department in January, from the handling of sexual assault and harassment within the military to changes to bias and discrimination training for all military branches. 

On the foreign policy front, it also establishes a "multi-year independent Afghanistan War Commission" to examine the war in Afghanistan after the US military withdrawal in August, covering the entire 20 years of the war.

 

So "changes to how sexual assault and harassment are prosecuted and handled in the military" is a euphemism for absolutely ripping the spine out of a bipartisan Senate bill that would put most felony cases into that hands of federal prosecutors, not just harassment claims and assure that the bill never gets a vote.

The bigger issue is "Why do we need even more money for the Pentagon when we're leaving Afghanistan" and the answer is "Whatever nonsense Russia and China are up to with Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively".

There's always money in the banana stand for the shooty bits.

StupidiNews!

• Manhattan billionaire Michael Steinhardt has surrendered nearly $70 million in stolen relics along with a lifetime ban on acquiring such objects in a deal with federal prosecutors.
• Israeli defense forces have completed the "Iron Dome" barrier along the Gaza border with the aim of shooting down Hamas rockets fired into the country.
• COVID Delta and Omicron variants are hitting Ontario "hard and fast" this winter as Canadian health officials are warning citizens to mask up and get vaccinated.
• Australia's government is joining the Biden administration in a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in  February.
• Illinois Democratic state Rep. Jonathan Carroll wants unvaccinated COVID-19 patients to pay 100% of hospital costs out-of-pocket, but his legislation faces major legal and federal hurdles.
  

Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Team WIN THE MORNING can barely contain themselves over Democratic governors and senators starting to complain about President Biden's vaccine mandates.

 

Three months ago, as California Gov. GAVIN NEWSOM was turning around his fate in the state's recall election, many Democrats came to the conclusion that they'd struck political gold. Mandates to get the Covid-19 vaccine weren't just extremely valuable public health policy but they were electorally powerful too.

Now, moderate and frontline members of the party are singing a different tune.

In recent comments, several high-profile Democrats have stated their opposition to vaccine mandates, specifically applied to private businesses. The most recent Democratic lawmaker to voice her concern was Michigan Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER. Once considered to be Biden’s vice president, Whitmer said she opposes mandates, citing the impact on the state’s workforce — as Michigan grapples with upticks in cases and residents are split on whether or not to get the vaccine.

"We’re an employer too, the state of Michigan is," Whitmer said on Monday, according to the Daily News in Greenville. "I know if that mandate happens, we’re going to lose state employees. That’s why I haven’t proposed a mandate at the state level. Some states have. We have not, we’re waiting to see what happens in court."

Whitmer isn’t the only Democrat now sounding these notes. Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) has said he does not support requiring businesses with over 100 employees to ensure that their workforces are vaccinated from Covid-19. Sen. JON TESTER (D-Mont.) has thrown a bit of shade on it too. Gov. PHIL MURPHY (D-.N.J.), shortly before an unexpectedly close re-election win, shied away from embracing a strict vaccine mandate for teachers and other public workers. Gov. KATHY HOCHUL (D-N.Y.), who is running for election after taking over for disgraced former Gov. ANDREW CUOMO (D-N.Y.), has stated her opposition to a “broad-based mandate for all private-sector workers in New York.”

The souring of some Democrats on the mandate comes as the courts strike legal blow after legal blow against a series of vaccine mandates President JOE BIDEN unveiled in September, and it’s prompting concerns in the party that they’re ending up with the worst of all worlds: a blunt policy that won’t go into effect but that will saddle them politically.

“On one hand, it’s just another thing added to the pile of shit that he’s already been dealing with,” a Democratic strategist told us. “On the other hand, it’s just one more front that he and his team are going to have to fight.”

The White House, so far at least, seems unbowed by it all. Aides are convinced that the mandates are necessary to finally tamp down the pandemic, which they believe is Biden’s political end-all, be-all. And they point to an uptick in vaccination rates after businesses and other institutions implemented their own mandates as evidence that they work.

“We know it works. That’s why the administration and the president will continue pressing forward,” White House press secretary JEN PSAKI said of vaccine mandates at today’s briefing.

Biden himself was initially skeptical of requirements that people be vaccinated against the coronavirus, out of a belief that most Americans would jump at the chance to get their shots if they were free and easily accessible. He wanted to steer clear of the politicization that has hampered much of the Covid-19 response, viewing mandates as a concept that could easily spark blowback.

“The concern all along was that mandates can be polarizing, that they have the potential to further entrench people in their resistance,” said CELINE GOUNDER, who advised the Biden transition on the Covid-19 response. “They really tried with incentives over the summer, hoping they didn’t have to go the route of mandates.”

The Delta variant’s emergence — combined with growing GOP opposition to the vaccination campaign — upended that calculation. Faced with a resurgence of cases, plateauing vaccination rate and few alternatives, administration officials by September concluded any political damage done by imposing mandates would be far outweighed by the price that Biden would pay if he failed to rein in the pandemic.

“It’s also important to keep in mind the importance this issue had on the presidential election. Swing voters in particular strongly disagreed with Donald Trump’s failure to act and ignorance towards the severity of the virus,” said ADRIENNE ELROD, a Democratic strategist and former Biden campaign aide. “Voters wanted leadership and a plan, and President Biden delivered.”

The thing is, COVID Omicron is now here as we plunge into another pandemic winter, and the urgency for vaccinations is higher than ever. Vaccination rates have plateaued in many red states, and in nearly 20 states, all of them Trump states, the fully vaccinated rate is still under 55% as of this week.

 

 

So yeah, vaccine mandates are going to be necessary. We're still nowhere near herd immunity and in 10 states, the unvaccinated still outnumber the vaccinated after months of being available.

But yeah, Dems are starting to waver on mandates now. Biden's unpopularity is starting to hurt them politically. Whitmer is facing a tough reelection campaign in 2022, and Kathy Hochul has a primary coming up in only a few months, but Manchin isn't helping and Phil Murphy just won last month.

This mixed messaging on mandates in deeply blue states like NY and NJ are going to hurt people, and it annoys the hell out of me.