Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

If Tuesday's Supreme Court arguments were any indication, we'll soon have a 5-4 SCOTUS decision on the Census question of citizenship that could terrorize millions of undocumented in America as the Trump regime gears up for mass detainment and deportations, and cost blue states several congressional districts starting in 2022.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday appeared inclined to hand President Donald Trump a victory on his administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a move opponents call a Republican effort to deter immigrants from taking part.

During arguments in the closely watched case, conservative justices rallied in defense of the administration’s stated justification for using the citizenship question in the decennial population count, while their liberal counterparts remained skeptical. 

The court has a 5-4 conservative majority. Among the conservative justices indicating support toward the administration’s stance were Trump’s two appointees, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, as well as Chief Justice John Roberts, considered the court’s pivotal vote. 

Lower courts have blocked the question, ruling that the administration violated federal law and the U.S. Constitution in seeking to include it on the census form. A ruling by the Supreme Court is due by the end of June. 

Opponents have said inclusion of a citizenship question would cause a sizeable undercount by frightening immigrant households and Latinos from filling out the census forms, fearful that the information would be shared with law enforcement. This would cost Democratic-leaning areas electoral representation in Congress and federal aid, benefiting Trump’s fellow Republicans and Republican-leaning parts of the country, they said.

The census is used to allot seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and distribute some $800 billion in federal funds. 

During extended arguments that lasted about 80 minutes, Roberts and other conservative justices appeared to embrace the administration’s argument that the question would yield better data to enforce the Voting Rights Act, which protects eligible voters from discrimination. 

Roberts challenged New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood, whose state sued the administration over the plan to add the question, saying citizenship is critical information for enforcing the Voting Rights Act. Roberts also said it is “quite common” for census questions to capture demographic information.

This ruling could very well seal a permanent Republican government for at least another decade, if not longer.  If you think the GOP of today is bad, wait until they start rounding up "illegals" and political foes and using force of the state to punish those would protect them.

It's already ugly.  It's going to get lethal, and fast.  The real issue is that Republicans are counting on this to starve blue states of federal money, and to redistribute dozens of House districts from blue states to red, locking in a permanent GOP majority.

This one's going to be bad, guys.  America may not recover from the Trump regime.

But her emails though, right?

Soccer It To Me, Cincy, Con't

Pretending that Cincinnati's newly minted Major League Soccer team, FC Cincinnati, isn't extremely popular around town is ludicrous, but FC Cincinnati pretending like they're not buying up land around their West End stadium site and throwing black residents out is just as stupid.  Enquirer politics columnist Jason Williams:

FC Cincinnati's stop-and-go roller coaster of spin and parsed words needs to be parked for good.

Will we ever get the actual truth from the soccer club about its West End stadium site plans and what the team wants to do near it?

In January 2018, team president Jeff Berding told WCPO-TV: “Let me stress this: We’re not taking anyone’s homes. We’re going to increase home ownership. We’re going to increase the number of people living in a neighborhood. The notion that we’re somehow going to try to buy people’s homes out, move people out of the neighborhood, that’s just false. That's just made up.”

Today, at least 17 residents have been or are being told to get out of their homes.
Oh, FC Cincinnati would say the people being displaced are renters – not homeowners – and none of them live on the actual stadium site. Those folks live in buildings adjacent to the approved stadium site, properties bought by none other than FC Cincinnati.

Excuse me while I regain my balance from all the spin.

Fact: Whether it's the actual stadium site or adjacent land, if FC Cincinnati owns it, then it's all related to the new 26,500-seat venue. The adjacent land might be used for parking or fan plazas or even new condos, but it's all owned by FC Cincinnati and centers on the club making its new home in the West End.

Why can't the team just be upfront about that?

Maybe the team is worried about another public relations hit. Too late.

FC Cincinnati stepped into another mess of its own doing when news broke earlier this month that the team is buying three buildings on Wade Street, a stone's throw from where the north end of the new grass field, er, pitch, will be.

A 99-year-old, bedridden women has been told to move from one of those buildings, feeding a narrative pushed by stadium opponents that the big, bad, billionaire team owners don't care.

I believe Carl Lindner III and his ownership group actually care a lot, and this $250 million private investment in a struggling neighborhood is a good thing for the city. But the lack of transparency, the spin and parsing of words coming from FC Cincinnati's front office is overshadowing the good right now.

Had the team been upfront about actually having to displace residents, most fair-minded and objective people would've understood. It's hard to do any massive development project in an urban-core neighborhood without displacing residents.

FC Cincinnati is a private organization and it's free to make deals with other private businesses, as was the case with FC Cincinnati and the Wade Street building owners. But when you originally tell the public no one will lose their homes to make way for the stadium and then pull a fast one, it can erode credibility. And in this neighborhood, the team needs to build credibility along with its stadium.

And the big problem, and why I can't and won't support FC Cincinnati in any way, is because they lied to black people and then bought their homes out from under them and kicked them out.  Jeff Berding and the club figured they didn't have to tell the truth, because who cares about Cincinnati's black neighborhoods, right?  Nothing they can do anyway, not this late in the game.

I admit it was far worse 60 years ago when Kenyon-Barr and Queensgate in the heart of West End were razed to the ground and tens of thousands of black folk lost everything to "urban renewal" and Interstate 75, but the sentiment sure hasn't changed.

We'll see what happens but at this point any credibility FC Cincinnati had left with West End residents just evaporated, and it's only going to get worse.

Courting Disaster, Con't

The good news is that there's extremely generous odds that Trump will commit more public and obvious obstruction of justice in his efforts to cover-up the Mueller report and to stop House Democrats from getting his financial information, but that means an eventual showdown with the US Supreme Court.

The White House has instructed a former official who was in charge of the security clearance process to not comply with a House subpoena demanding his appearance for an interview, the latest move by the Trump administration to thwart Democratic-led investigations into all aspects of the presidency. 

After a day of tense negotiations, the White House late Monday told the former official, Carl Kline, who now works at the Defense Department, to not appear at Tuesday's deposition, contending that Democrats were seeking access to confidential information that should be off limits. 

The move raises the prospect that the House Oversight Committee could seek to hold Kline in contempt, a step that Chairman Elijah Cummings warned Monday he would take. And it's the latest White House effort to stonewall Democratic investigations, coming the same day the Trump Organization filed a lawsuit to prevent an accounting firm from complying with Cummings' subpoena for President Donald Trump's past financial records. 

Michael Purpura, deputy counsel to Trump, argued that Cummings' subpoena of Kline "unconstitutionally encroaches on fundamental executive branch interests," according to a letter obtained by CNN. 

Kline's attorney, Robert Driscoll, said his client would listen to his employer. 

"With two masters from two equal branches of government, we will follow the instructions of the one that employs him," Driscoll said in a separate letter obtained by CNN. 

The flurry of letters capped a day of tense talks ahead of Tuesday's anticipated deposition with Kline, a key witness as part of Democrats' probe into whether the White House mishandled the security clearance process for top officials, including for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. 

Kline, who was subpoenaed to appear before the committee Tuesday, served as the White House personnel security director for the first two years of the Trump administration. A White House official, Tricia Newbold, told the committee that at least 25 individuals had been greenlighted for security clearances despite serious concerns raised during the vetting process -- and alleged that Kline retaliated against her for speaking out.

I know I keep arguing that there's more than enough evidence to impeach now, but giving the Trump regime enough rope to hang then entire bunch only makes the case against Trump stronger.  There's still a decent chance that the Supreme Court won't take up this fight for some time, saying that Congress and the White House should work it out, and this could very well end up being strung along for 18 months or more.

But there's a chance that these fights build up so rapidly on so many different fronts that SCOTUS feels compelled to act sooner.  Chief Justice Roberts doesn't want to be remembered as a villain, but as a Solomon-like figure of wisdom.

I still don't know the outcome though, and anyone who tells you they do is lying.

StupidiNews!

• Canadian officials have confirmed finding the bodies of three professional mountain climbers Sunday after an avalanche last week on Banff National Park's Howse Peak.
• Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain has withdrawn his name from nomination for the Federal Reserve, it's widely believed his nomination would not have survived Senate confirmation.
• Sri Lanka's government is invoking an emergency powers law blaming Sunday's deadly bombings on "international networks" of terrorists, the law gives police broad powers to detain suspects.
• Iran is countering the Trump regime's announcement of ending sanctions waivers for Iranian oil by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, which could block a fifth of the world's oil supply.
• New York state officials have reached a settlement with cable giant Charter, the company will have to agree to merger conditions and pay the state $12 million to fund rural broadband upstate.