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

...because it does. And while Democrats look like they are actually going to come out ahead in redistricting, that still leaves the more than two dozen retirements of long-time Democratic House members, the latest being Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch.

Florida Rep. Ted Deutch announced on Monday he will not seek reelection in November, the latest in a string of Democratic members of Congress who have decided to retire or seek another office in a challenging political environment. 

Deutch has represented Fort Lauderdale since winning his first election in 2010. He will resign from office this fall to serve as the next Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Committee. 

Deutch, the chairman of the House Ethics Committee and member of the Foreign Affairs and Judiciary committees, became an outspoken advocate for gun control measures following the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in his district. 

"Our community was profoundly changed on February 14, 2018," said Deutch in a statement. "Seventeen students and teachers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were killed that day, and I have tried every day since to be there for their families and to help them honor the memories of their loved ones in all the ways they are working to make our schools and community safer." 

"I have also tried to support the survivors in any way I can, though it is their powerful voices that have helped create desperately needed change," he added. "The Parkland families and student survivors inspire me every day." 

Deutch also noted his work trying to secure Iran hostage Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent, and grieving the news of his passing in 2020 alongside his family. "I have been forever changed by serving the people of Broward and Palm Beach Counties in Congress," said Deutch. 

Already 30 House Democrats have decided to retire or seek higher office rather than run for reelection in 2022. While not all of those members serve competitive districts, the exodus is a sign that Democrats are not confident of holding the House majority after November's midterm elections.

 

Redistricting battle or no, House Democrats have lost about 15% of their members before a single vote has been cast, and it's can't be a good thing.  That means primaries are going to be super important, so get involved now and recheck your voter registration.

Vote like your country depends on it. It does.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As Vladimir Putin and the Russian military is finding out, the old adage of "Your war plan rarely survives contact with the enemy" still holds true here in the digital age.

The war in Ukraine isn’t going Russia’s way.

Videos posted on social media show whole columns of tanks and armored vehicles have been wiped out. Others have been stopped in their tracks by ordinary Ukrainians standing on the street to block their advance.

Lightly armed units propelled deep into the country without support have been surrounded and their soldiers captured or killed. Warplanes have been shot out of the skies and helicopters have been downed, according to Ukrainian and U.S. military officials.

Logistics supply chains have failed, leaving troops stranded on roadsides to be captured because their vehicles ran out of fuel.

Most critically, Russia has proved unable to secure air superiority over the tiny Ukrainian air force — despite having the second-largest air force in the world, Pentagon officials say. Its troops have yet to take control of any significant city or meaningful chunk of territory, a senior U.S. defense official said Sunday.

On Sunday, a Russian attempt to seize control of the city of Kharkiv, less than 30 miles from the Russian border, was repelled. A fresh push toward the capital, Kyiv, came to a smoking end in the suburb of Irpin, where videos posted on social media showed the charred remains of Russian tanks and armored vehicles strewn around the streets while Ukrainian soldiers removed weapons from the bodies of dead Russians.

These scenes of humiliation have played out widely on social media, where the Ukrainians have won a clear advantage. Multiple videos from around the country have portrayed scenes of burned Russian tanks, dead Russian soldiers and captured Russians, some barely out of their teens, making plaintive calls home to their parents.

The Russian military has meanwhile issued little in the way of reporting on the Ukraine war, in contrast to the prolific reporting that came out of its intervention in Syria. On Sunday, a spokesman acknowledged that there had been Russian casualties and losses, while saying they were “many times less” than those suffered by Ukraine.

“Russian servicemen are showing courage and heroism while fulfilling combat tasks in the special military operation. Unfortunately, there are killed and injured among our comrades,” the state news agency Tass quoted military spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying. “The losses of the Russian Armed Forces are many times less than the number of servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces.”

 

We've gone from Baghdad Bob to Moscow Mikhail. 

 

Meanwhile, on the global finance front, Moscow is getting hammered and sickled.

Russia was scrambling to prevent financial meltdown Monday as its economy was slammed by a broadside of crushing Western sanctions imposed over the weekend in response to the invasion of Ukraine. 

President Vladimir Putin was due to hold crisis talks with his top advisers after the ruble crashed to a record low against the US dollar, the Russian central bank more than doubled interest rates to 20%, and the Moscow stock exchange was shuttered for the day. 

The European subsidiary of Russia's biggest bank was on the brink of collapse as savers rushed to withdraw their deposits. Economists warned that the Russian economy could shrink by 5%. 

The ruble lost about 20% of its value to trade at 100 to the dollar at 6 a.m. ET after earlier plummeting as much as 40%. The start of trading on the Russian stock market was delayed, and then canceled entirely, according to a statement from the country's central bank. 

The latest barrage of sanctions came Saturday, when the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada said they would expel some Russian banks from SWIFT, a global financial messaging service, and "paralyze" the assets of Russia's central bank. 

"The ratcheting up of Western sanctions over the weekend has left Russian banks on the edge of crisis," wrote Liam Peach, an emerging market economist at Capital Economics, in a note on Monday. 

Putin's government has spent the past eight years preparing Russia for tough sanctions by building up a war chest of $630 billion in international reserves including currencies and gold, but at least some of that financial firepower is now frozen and his "fortress" economy is under unprecedented assault. 

"We will ... ban the transactions of Russia's central bank and freeze all its assets, to prevent it from financing Putin's war," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement Sunday. 

The United States also banned US dollar transactions with the Russian central bank in a move designed to prevent it accessing its "rainy day fund," senior US administration officials said. 

"Our strategy, to put it simply, is to make sure that the Russian economy goes backward as long as President Putin decides to go forward with his invasion of Ukraine," a senior administration official said. 

Peach at Capital Economics estimates that about 40% of Russia's reserves are now off limits to Moscow. 

"External conditions for the Russian economy have drastically changed," the Russian central bank said. "This is needed to support financial and price stability and protect the savings of citizens from depreciation," the bank added.

 

Putin has drastically underestimated both the density of Ukraine's collective spine and just how much the rest of Europe truly hates his ass, with Ukraine President Zelenskyy's impassioned plea for help from the European Union falling on very receptive ears. 

As the leaders of the European Union gathered for an emergency summit on Thursday night, momentum was already moving toward imposing tough new sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

But a handful of key leaders, notably including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, were reluctant to proceed with some of the harshest proposals. Scholz told reporters on the way into the meeting in Brussels that he wanted to focus on implementing sanctions that had already been approved before enacting new ones.

After a perfunctory debate, the presidents and prime ministers quickly approved sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and some of Russia’s biggest banks. Talk of barring Russia from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, however, stalled amid skepticism on the part of Scholz and the leaders of Austria, Italy and Cyprus, according to officials familiar with the deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.

Then Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dialed into the meeting via teleconference with a bracing appeal that left some of the world-weary politicians with watery eyes. In just five minutes, Zelensky — speaking from the battlefield of Kyiv — pleaded with European leaders for an honest assessment of his country’s ambition to join the European Union and for genuine help in its fight with the Russian invaders. Ukraine needed its neighbors to step up with food, ammunition, fuel, sanctions, all of it.

“It was extremely, extremely emotional,” said a European official briefed on the call. “He was essentially saying, ‘Look, we are here dying for European ideals.’” Before ending the video call, Zelensky told the gathering matter-of-factly that it might be the last time they saw him alive, according to a senior European official who was present.

Just that quickly, Zelensky’s personal appeal overwhelmed the resistance from European leaders to imposing measures that could drive the Russian economy into a state of near collapse. The result has been a rapid-fire series of developments boosting Ukraine’s fight to hold off the Russian military and shattering the limits on European assertiveness in national security affairs.

The actions culminated on Saturday, when the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union announced they would bar several major Russian banks from the global financial messaging system known as SWIFT, crack down on Russian oligarchs, and prevent the Russian central bank from bailing out the domestic economy.

 

Putin is suddenly on the losing end of this, or at least his best case now is the Pyrrhic victory end of this. He figured Zelensky would flee, the government would collapse, Russian Quislings could be brought in, and his $630 billion in the bank would hold out for the rough bits.

He's been wrong on all accounts.  This was supposed to be over by now in Kyiv. Vladimir is finding out reality is hard outside the Kremlin bubble.

Last Call For Lowering The Barr, Con't

Another month, another Trump regime slimeball trying to ooze their way back into polite political company with a tell-all book that trashes Dear Leader, all while making millions on the side, and this month is former Attorney General Bill Barr's turn.

Former Attorney General William Barr writes in a new book that former President Donald Trump has “shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed,” and that it is time for Republicans to focus on rising new leaders in the party.

The release of the former attorney general’s 600-page book, “One Damn Thing After Another,” is coming as Mr. Trump, who remains the GOP’s dominant figure, contemplates another presidential run. Mr. Barr writes that he was convinced that Mr. Trump could have won re-election in 2020 if he had “just exercised a modicum of self-restraint, moderating even a little of his pettiness.”

“The election was not ‘stolen,’ ” Mr. Barr writes. “Trump lost it.” Mr. Barr urges conservatives to look to “an impressive array of younger candidates” who share Mr. Trump’s agenda but not his “erratic personal behavior.” He didn’t mention any of those candidates by name.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Mr. Barr’s book. Last summer the former president called his former attorney general “a disappointment in every sense of the word.”

Mr. Barr’s memoir adds to a growing list of books by senior Trump administration officials and journalists about the former president. It is scheduled for release March 8 by the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins. Both HarperCollins and The Wall Street Journal are owned by News Corp.

The recollections and conclusions by Mr. Barr are notable because he was one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful cabinet secretaries and was once such a close ally that Democrats accused him of acting more like the president’s defense attorney than an apolitical law-enforcement official.

 

Barr goes on to explain how everyone at the Trump White House and the Justice Department that he ran were all the real problem and not him, but he saves some ammo to blast Trump:

Mr. Barr also describes times when he was privately frustrated by Mr. Trump’s aggressive style and constant comments on the Justice Department’s work.

He provides the details of a contentious meeting on Dec. 1 in the Oval Office hours after Mr. Barr said publicly that there wasn’t evidence of widespread voter fraud in the presidential election that could reverse Joe Biden’s victory, contradicting Mr. Trump’s claims.

“This is killing me—killing me. This is pulling the rug right out from under me,” Mr. Trump shouted at Mr. Barr, according to the book. “He stopped for a moment and then said, ‘You must hate Trump. You would only do this if you hate Trump.’ ”

Mr. Barr writes that he reminded Mr. Trump that he had “sacrificed a lot personally to come in to help you when I thought you were being wronged,” but that the Justice Department had not been able to verify any of his legal team’s assertions about mass voter fraud.

Mr. Trump then launched into a list of other grievances he had with his attorney general: that the federal prosecutor Mr. Barr ordered to review the origins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Russia probe that preceded the Mueller report hadn’t released his findings before the 2020 election, and that Mr. Barr declined to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey after a department watchdog rebuked him for sharing memos that contained sensitive information about his interactions with Mr. Trump, a complaint brought up repeatedly by the president.

Mr. Barr countered by offering to submit his resignation, according to the book. “Accepted!” Mr. Trump yelled, banging his palm on the table. “Leave and don’t go back to your office. You are done right now. Go home!” White House lawyers persuaded Mr. Trump not to follow through with Mr. Barr’s ouster.

Mr. Barr resigned a few weeks later, bringing a tumultuous end to his time in office.

After the election, Mr. Barr said that Mr. Trump “lost his grip” and that his false claims of voter fraud led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters trying to thwart the certification of Mr. Biden’s November, 2020, victory.

“The absurd lengths to which he took his ‘stolen election’ claim led to the rioting on Capitol Hill,” Mr. Barr writes.

 

So yeah, the real bravery was the Attorney General of the United States witnessing Trump breaking federal law and not doing a goddamn thing about it.

 

 

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

A reminder that while there are several white supremacist domestic terrorism groups out there, by far the largest, most powerful, and most dangerous of those groups, is the Republican Party.

A Republican state senator fawned over the leader of a white nationalist movement on Friday and told his followers that she fantasizes about hanging her perceived enemies from gallows.

“I’ve said we need to build more gallows. If we try some of these high-level criminals, convict them and use a newly built set of gallows, it’ll make an example of these traitors who have betrayed our country,” Sen. Wendy Rogers, R-Flagstaff, said Feb. 25 in her speech to the white nationalist America First Political Action Conference in Florida.

Rogers told the white nationalists who were assembled in the ballroom at the Orlando World Center Marriott that they were “patriots.”

She addressed the AFPAC crowd remotely, speaking from Arizona, where she said she was busy pushing legislation. Rogers effusively praised Nick Fuentes, the event’s racist organizer, who she said had been “de-platformed everywhere” because he says things that upset “the media and the far left.”

“I truly respect Nick because he’s the most persecuted man in America,” she said to loud cheers, adding later that he was “standing up to tyranny” by creating AFPAC.

Fuentes, an advocate of turning America into a nation only for white Christians, is one of the leaders of the so-called “groyper” movement — along with the founder of American Identity Movement, a white nationalist group formerly known as Identity Ervopa — and Rogers is one of its emerging icons. The groyper movement is a collection of white nationalists who seek to normalize racism and make it a part of mainstream conservative political ideology.

AFPAC opened with Fuentes soliciting a round of applause from the crowd for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The white nationalists chanted in response, “Putin! Putin! Putin!”

In his closing speech, Fuentes said “the United States is the evil empire in the world.”

“Now, they’re going and saying,’’Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler,’ as if that isn’t a good thing,” he said, before nervously laughing and adding, “Oops, I shouldn’t have said that.”

Rogers lamented that there was no longer freedom of speech, and said “we can’t even laugh at comedy any more” for fear of being banned from social media platforms. (The First Amendment protects people from being punished by the government for their speech, but it does not apply to businesses or exempt people from facing consequences for their speech.) She pined for the 1980s and 1990s, when “we could say the craziest stuff and people would just laugh and not take offense, because it was simply light-hearted.”

“Now, they deplatform and debank people like Nick Fuentes, and even President (Donald) Trump,” she said. “This is like the USSR, but worse.”

The crowd at AFPAC included prominent members of America’s white nationalist movement, among them Jared Taylor and Peter Brimelow. Taylor garnered a following as the editor of a now-defunct pseudo-academic magazine that published pieces from open racists, and he hosts an annual conference that the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as a place “where racist intellectuals rub shoulders with Klansmen, neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.” Brimelow publishes a popular white nationalist website and has said “the U.S. is a white nation.”

One speaker at the event was Vincent James Foxx, a stalwart white nationalist who said he wanted to “criminalize” LGBTQ Americans and warned of the “Great Replacement.” That idea, popular among white supremacists, holds that white Americans are being replaced by non-white immigrants.

It has also inspired violence. Fears of immigrants undermining his vision of a white Christian Europe motivated Anders Behring Breivik’s murderous rampage in 2011 at a Norwegian youth summer camp. In the U.S., the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 was the deadliest attack against the Jewish community in United States history. Just before it took place, the killer took to right-wing social media site Gab to say he believed that immigrants were being brought in to replace and “kill our people.” The next year in New Zealand, 51 people would be killed and 40 injured but not before the shooter would post a 74-page manifesto titled “The Great Replacement.”

After Foxx spoke, Rogers gushed over him on Telegram: “Vincent James run for office.”

 

Also at this white nationalist confab in Florida this weekend, sitting House Republicans Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who gave the keynote address at this same event last year.

 

Greene and Gosar are a problem, Wendy Rogers is a problem, but the larger one is the fact that the vast majority of Republican politicians and voters agree with them.

 

Sunday Long Read: The Tale Of The Terrible Thomases

Our Sunday Long Read is a vitally important story, as Danny Hakim and Jo Becker at New York Times Magazine presents the case as to why Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas should be removed from the bench over his wife Ginny's unprecedented political activism, up to and including her influence on SCOTUS pertaining to Donald Trump's plan to steal the 2020 election with the Court's help.

 

The call to action was titled “Election Results and Legal Battles: What Now?” Shared in the days after the 2020 presidential election, it urged the members of an influential if secretive right-wing group to contact legislators in three of the swing states that tipped the balance for Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The aim was audacious: Keep President Donald J. Trump in power.

The group, the Council for National Policy, brings together old-school Republican luminaries, Christian conservatives, Tea Party activists and MAGA operatives, with more than 400 members who include leaders of organizations like the Federalist Society, the National Rifle Association and the Family Research Council. Founded in 1981 as a counterweight to liberalism, the group was hailed by President Ronald Reagan as seeking the “return of righteousness, justice and truth” to America.

As Trump insisted, without evidence, that fraud had cheated him of victory, conservative groups rushed to rally behind him. The council stood out, however, not only because of its pedigree but also because one of its newest leaders was Virginia Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas and a longtime activist in right-wing circles. She had taken on a prominent role at the council during the Trump years and by 2019 had joined the nine-member board of C.N.P. Action, an arm of the council organized as a 501(c)4 under a provision of the tax code that allows for direct political advocacy. It was C.N.P. Action that circulated the November “action steps” document, the existence of which has not been previously reported. It instructed members to pressure Republican lawmakers into challenging the election results and appointing alternate slates of electors: “Demand that they not abandon their Constitutional responsibilities during a time such as this.”

Such a plan, if carried out successfully, would have almost certainly landed before the Supreme Court — and Ginni Thomas’s husband. In fact, Trump was already calling for that to happen. In a Dec. 2 speech at the White House, the president falsely claimed that “millions of votes were cast illegally in swing states alone” and said he hoped “the Supreme Court of the United States will see it” and “will do what’s right for our country, because our country cannot live with this kind of an election.”

The Thomases have long posed a unique quandary in Washington. Because Supreme Court justices do not want to be perceived as partisan, they tend to avoid political events and entanglements, and their spouses often keep low profiles. But the Thomases have defied such norms. Since the founding of the nation, no spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice has been as overt a political activist as Ginni Thomas. In addition to her perch at the Council for National Policy, she founded a group called Groundswell with the support of Stephen K. Bannon, the hard-line nationalist and former Trump adviser. It holds a weekly meeting of influential conservatives, many of whom work directly on issues that have come before the court.

Ginni Thomas insists, in her council biography, that she and her husband operate in “separate professional lanes,” but those lanes in fact merge with notable frequency. For the three decades he has sat on the Supreme Court, they have worked in tandem from the bench and the political trenches to take aim at targets like Roe v. Wade and affirmative action. Together they believe that “America is in a vicious battle for its founding principles,” as Ginni Thomas has put it. Her views, once seen as on the fringe, have come to dominate the Republican Party. And with Trump’s three appointments reshaping the Supreme Court, her husband finds himself at the center of a new conservative majority poised to shake the foundations of settled law. In a nation freighted with division and upheaval, the Thomases have found their moment.

This article draws on hours of recordings and internal documents from groups affiliated with the Thomases; dozens of interviews with the Thomases’ classmates, friends, colleagues and critics, as well as more than a dozen Trump White House aides and supporters and some of Justice Thomas’s former clerks; and an archive of Council for National Policy videos and internal documents provided by an academic researcher in Australia, Brent Allpress.

The reporting uncovered new details on the Thomases’ ascent: how Trump courted Justice Thomas; how Ginni Thomas used that courtship to gain access to the Oval Office, where her insistent policy and personnel suggestions so aggravated aides that one called her a “wrecking ball” while others put together an opposition-research-style report on her that was obtained by The Times; and the extent to which Justice Thomas flouted judicial-ethics guidance by participating in events hosted by conservative organizations with matters before the court. Those organizations showered the couple with accolades and, in at least one case, used their appearances to attract event fees, donations and new members.

New reporting also shows just how blurred the lines between the couple’s interests became during the effort to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the rally held at the Ellipse, just outside the White House grounds, aimed at stopping Congress from certifying the state votes that gave Joe Biden his victory. Many of the rally organizers and those advising Trump had connections to the Thomases, but little has been known about what role, if any, Ginni Thomas played, beyond the fact that on the morning of the March to Save America, as the rally was called, she urged her Facebook followers to watch how the day unfolded. “LOVE MAGA people!!!!” she posted before the march turned violent. “GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU STANDING UP or PRAYING!”

But her role went deeper, and beyond C.N.P. Action. Dustin Stockton, an organizer who worked with Women for America First, which held the permit for the Ellipse rally, said he was told that Ginni Thomas played a peacemaking role between feuding factions of rally organizers “so that there wouldn’t be any division around January 6.”

“The way it was presented to me was that Ginni was uniting these different factions around a singular mission on January 6,” said Stockton, who previously worked for Bannon. “That Ginni was involved made sense — she’s pretty neutral, and she doesn’t have a lot of enemies in the movement.”

 

That's right.

 

Ginny Thomas helped organize the January 6th terrorist attack on the US Capitol.

 

It actually gets worse ahead. This is one of the more important SLR articles in quite some time, folks.

 

Clarence Thomas has to go.

 

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

With the final diplomatic stumbling blocks over Russian sanctions from the EU and especially Germany gone, the economic pain for Putin and his crew of oligarchs is now in full swing.

The United States, Britain, Europe and Canada on Saturday moved to block Russia's access to the SWIFT international payment system as part of another round of sanctions against Moscow as it continues its assault against Ukraine.

The measures, which will also include restriction on the Russian central bank's international reserves, will be implemented in the coming days, the nations said in a joint statement.

"We commit to ensuring that a certain number of Russian banks are removed from SWIFT," Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the European Union's executive, said in a statement to the media.

"This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally."

She said that cutting Russian banks off the system will stop them from conducting most of their financial transactions worldwide and effectively block Russian exports and imports.

She said allies would stop Russia from "using its war chest," paralysing the assets of its central bank, freezing its transactions and making it impossible for the central bank to liquidate its assets.

"Finally, we will work to prohibit Russian oligarchs from using their financial assets on our markets," she said.

EU foreign ministers will discuss the sanctions package at a virtual meeting on Sunday evening, the fourth time they come together in a week.

 

The move effectively freezes Russia's finances and is the global finance equivalent of unplugging Russia from the world's financial grid. The UN Security Council is expected to formally call for a special meeting tomorrow as well, the move effectively disables any veto from the five permanent members, including Russia.

Putin picked a fight and at this point with Kyiv still holding after 72 hours and a world of financial hurt coming for Monday, he's got a fight.

Whether it's the fight he wanted, we'll see.

Our Little Russian White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

America's cadre of white supremacist domestic terrorism groups sure love them some Vladimir Putin as a prime example of their bloodlust for conquest of the "impure", and they might even love him more than the Mango Malefactor.

White nationalist livestreamer Nicholas Fuentes has made no secret of where his loyalties lie in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“I wish Putin was president of America,” he mused to his 45,000 subscribers on Telegram on Wednesday morning.

Fifteen hours later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. And Fuentes, who’s hosting a far-right conference in Florida Friday night, was psyched.

“I am totally rooting for Russia,” he wrote the following morning. “This is the coolest thing to happen since 1/6.”

“UKRAINE WILL BE DESTROYED", added Fuentes, who describes himself as a “Christian nationalist,” someone who thinks the U.S. is a fundamentally Christian nation. “I never doubted you [Putin], my Czar."

Over on the Gab platform, its CEO Andrew Torba also expressed his support for Putin.

“Lol Putin is brilliant. Western Media, which is obsessed with ‘muh Nazis’ will have a tough time spinning this one,” wrote Torba, who’s sponsoring Fuentes’ conference, the America First Political Action Conference (AFPAC), this weekend. “What he really means is Ukraine needs to be liberated and cleansed from the degeneracy of the secular western globalist empire.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Wednesday night, far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist. In their minds, Ukraine is just a corrupt pawn in a vast “globalist” conspiracy.

It may seem confusing that much of the American far-right, who increasingly describe any policies they dislike as “communism,” would be rooting for Russia, given the history of the Soviet Union. But for at least a decade, Russia has been cultivating deep ties and even bankrolling ultranationalist and far-right movements elsewhere. Religious fundamentalists and white supremacists, inspired partially by the writings of a Kremlin-linked ideologue, have hailed Putin as a white Christian crusader on a mission to restore traditional values.

The far-right’s support for Russia also has roots in fringe narratives about Russia that have been simmering for decades, according to Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium (ARC). For example, some antisemitics have long claimed that Russia’s communist era was a historical blip and the result of a “Jewish conspiracy.”

“They’re looking past the communist era,” said Kriner. “Those who can see a deeper ethnonationalist, ethnofascist component to Russia can find comfort and affinity toward what Putin is doing.”

In the U.S., “wokeness”—a catchall term for progressive or inclusive policies—is increasingly characterized on the right, especially among Christian nationalists, as antithetical to American values. That way of thinking has bled into pro-Putin rhetoric from the far-right this week. Some have mocked the U.S. for its inclusive policies on transgender recruits.

“Putin’s military gets Ukraine,” wrote Arizona state Sen. Wendy Rogers, who is speaking at AFPAC, on her Telegram channel. “Our military gets trannies and face masks.”

 

And let's not forget for a moment that the cadre I spoke of earlier includes dozens of sitting Republican political candidates at all levels of government, state legislators, and members of Congress, like Wendy Rogers.

If these assholes get control of the country again, well...

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

With their possible options down to Hail Mary status as North Carolina's Supreme Court has ruled their gerrymandering plans unconstitutional again and again, NC Republicans are throwing a long bomb to the US Supreme Court in order to create a vile precedent that would leave the final word on redistricting up to state legislatures, not state supreme courts, and remake redistricting across the country.

In a late Friday afternoon filing as war raged in Ukraine and as President Joe Biden announced Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans dropped their own bombshell: a legal filing in the Supreme Court that if successful would not only restore the state legislature’s ability to engage in partisan gerrymandering and perhaps tip control of Congress, but would radically alter the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures that violate voting rights in federal elections. There are strong arguments Republicans should lose this case, but don’t count them out before a polarized and politicized Supreme Court.

A few years ago, in a case called Rucho v. Common Cause, the U.S. Supreme Court shut the federal courthouse door to partisan gerrymandering claims—claims that political parties drawing maps for electing members of Congress or state legislative bodies manipulated those maps purely for partisan gain. The Rucho court majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts explained that there were other paths for reining in this conduct, including Congress passing legislation (as the Freedom to Vote Act would have done), the creation of independent commissions, and state courts. Indeed, the court noted: “Provisions in state statutes and state constitutions can provide standards and guidance for state courts to apply” in policing nefarious redistricting practices.

And that’s exactly what happened in North Carolina. The state Supreme Court recently held that the North Carolina Republican-controlled legislature’s gerrymandering of Congressional and other districts was a partisan gerrymander grossly favoring Republicans violating the state constitution’s provisions guaranteeing free elections. This ruling was going to lead to a much fairer map in a state that is mostly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

Now the Republican-dominated general assembly has struck back raising what’s come to be known as the “independent state legislature” theory. This move was something I feared would happen weeks ago as Republicans were running out of options. They’ve argued in a new filing before the Supreme Court that the North Carolina Supreme Court does not have the power even in reliance on the state Constitution and despite Rucho to rein in partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts when done by a state legislature.

 

The GOP argument is that since Article I, section 4gives the state legislatures the power to set elections, Republicans argue they are the final arbiter, and without judicial oversight at all. It's hogwash, but if there's five votes on SCOTUS, then that's how it is.

We'll see if the dreaded shadow docket strikes again.

A Supreme Addition

President Joe Biden is expected to nominate DC Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the US Supreme Court today, in what is expected to be a difficult Senate fight, thanks to Joe Manchin.

President Joe Biden is expected to announce Friday that he will nominate Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Justice Stephen Breyer on the Supreme Court, according to a source familiar with the matter.

If confirmed, Jackson would become the first Black woman to serve on the court. At 51, she would also be the second-youngest justice on the current court (Justice Amy Coney Barrett turned 50 in January) and the first justice since Thurgood Marshall with significant experience as a defense lawyer.

As the successor to Breyer, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1994, Jackson would not change the court’s current 6-to-3 conservative supermajority.

Jackson was nominated to District Court just eight months ago and was confirmed by a 53-44 vote with the support of three Senate Republicans. Only David Souter, appointed by George W. Bush, came to the Supreme Court with less time on the federal appeals court — under five months in his case.

But Jackson also served eight years as a federal trial judge in Washington. At her confirmation hearing for that position, she received an endorsement from former House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who is related by marriage. (Her husband’s twin brother is the married to the sister of Ryan’s wife.)

“Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, for her integrity, is unequivocal. She is an amazing person,” Ryan said.

Born in Washington, Jackson grew up in Miami, where her mother was a school administrator and her father was a lawyer for the Miami-Dade school board. “When people ask me why I decided to go into the legal profession,” she said in a 2017 speech, “I often tell the story of how, when I was in preschool, I would sit at the dining room table doing my homework with my father. He had all his law books stacked up, and I had all my coloring books stacked up.”

One of her uncles was a Miami police chief. Another was a police detective. A third was sentenced to life in prison for possessing a large amount of cocaine. President Barack Obama commuted his sentence in 2016.

Jackson was a national oratory champion and student body president in high school and then graduated from Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She was a Supreme Court law clerk for Breyer, who once described her as “great, brilliant, decent, with a mix of common sense and thoughtfulness.”

She met her husband, Patrick, at Harvard where he was a pre-med student. He’s now a surgeon at a Washington hospital. They have two daughters.

Jackson spent seven years in private practice and was also an assistant public defender in Washington, representing defendants who could not afford to hire a lawyer. One notable case involved a terrorism detainee at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, who she said should not be held without charges or trial.

Asked during her appeals court confirmation about her work on that case, she said that her brother was serving in the Army in Iraq at the time and that the briefs she submitted “did not necessarily represent my personal views with regard to the war on terror.”

Jackson served on the U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets guidelines for federal judges to follow in imposing punishment in criminal cases. She helped reduce the recommended penalties for nonviolent drug offenders.

As a judge, Jackson has no record of rulings, writings or speeches on the hot-button issues of abortion, gun rights or freedom of religion. She was on the three-judge appeals court panel that rejected former President Donald Trump’s effort to block the National Archives from giving the House Jan. 6 committee hundreds of documents from his time in the White House.

 

Jackson, as a former public defender, member of the US Sentencing Commission, and federal trial judge has boatloads of legal experience. The real issue however is whether or not Jackson has 50 votes, and considering Sen. Joe Manchin straight up told Biden to nominate someone else, she may very well not.  Certainly no Republican will vote for her.  Don't count on Murkowski, Collins, or Romney, either.

This is going to be a brutal fight, and once again it will 100% come down to how much Manchin will extract from Biden...or Sinema.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Three former police officers who killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020 have all been found guilty of federal civil rights violation charges by a jury today.

Former Minneapolis police officers Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane were found guilty of violating George Floyd's civil rights by a federal jury in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Thursday. 

The 12 jurors -- four men and eight women -- found Lane, Kueng and Thao guilty of depriving Floyd of his civil rights by showing deliberate indifference to his medical needs as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd for more than 9 minutes on May 25, 2020 -- ultimately killing him. The jurors also found Thao and Kueng guilty of an additional charge for failing to intervene to stop Chauvin. Lane, who did not face the extra charge, testified that he asked Chauvin twice to reposition Floyd while restraining him but was denied both times. 

Violating a person's civil rights "is punishable by a range of imprisonment up to a life term, or the death penalty, depending upon the circumstances of the crime, and the resulting injury, if any," according to the Department of Justice. Federal sentencing guidelines suggest the officers could receive a lesser sentence.

 

The fourth officer, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty by a state court and pleaded guilty to federal civil rights violation charged as part of his plea deal. The three other officers still face a state aiding and abetting trial later this year. 

Black Lives Still Matter.

The Night The Lights Went Out In Texas, Con't

With Texans still owing billions to power companies from the record February winter 2021 storm that all but crashed Texas's third world, unregulated power grid, the bankruptcy trial of one such power company, Brazos Electric, continued this week with, if you'll allow the pun, shocking testimony from the former head of the state's power commission.

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that when he ordered power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s frigid winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies, he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott.

Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliabilty Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting come back online former Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker had told him that Abbott wanted them to do whatever necessary to prevent further rotating blackouts that left millions of Texans without power.

“She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume,” Magness testified. “We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”

Abbott's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner said the governor was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices. He described a decision to send an aide to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis as based on the feeling the grid operator was spewing “disinformation."

Magness's decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap for more than 24 hours after conditions on the power grid began to improve is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric.

Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced them into bankruptcy.

“It did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” said Lino Mendiola, one of the attorneys representing Brazos. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”

The original order to raise power prices to the cap was made by the Public Utility Commission on Feb. 15, to try to get power plants back online and encourage large power users like factories and petrochemical plants to stay offline. ERCOT elected to keep prices at the cap until Feb. 19, a decision that the Texas Independent Market Monitor criticized in a report last year as having, “exceeded the mandate of the Commission.”

 

So Abbott's office lied, and the decision was made from the Governor's mansion to keep the power on, whatever the cost.

 

That cost of course being billions of dollars in electric bill price gouging, price gouging done by Texas itself.

Magness, who was fired last year, has long defended his and other ERCOT officials actions as necessary to keep the grid from slipping into a total blackout that could take weeks or months to recover from.

But in testimony in federal bankruptcy court in Houston Tuesday and Wednesday, he explained in detail how Walker had come to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis and relayed to him Abbott's demand that rotating blackouts come to an end.

Magness said he agreed that was still a risk, explaining even as power plants were starting to come back online on February 17, the system was far from secure. Some power plants were still coming offline because of cold or gas supply issues, and there was concern if power prices were allowed to return to normal market conditions, large power users might start coming back online and using crucial power reserves.

“We were still seeing 40,000 megawatts of outages. At the peak we had 52,000 megawatts but 40,000 is still a lot,” Magness said. “We saw the potential for load shed coming again.”

RELATED: All-night ERCOT meeting raises questions about Abbott’s role in power pricing debacle

And he described how after so many hours of power outages, there was risk that Texas's problems could cascade, explaining how water plants that had been relying on backup generation would have soon run out of fuel if rotating blackouts resumed.

“And I don’t know what else,” he said.

The judge overseeing the trial, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones, responded, “You’re looking into the unknown.”

“I don’t think anyone would say you were not trying to do the right thing,” he said. 

 

And let's remember, nothing has been done to free the state from its power gouging scheme either.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown Meltdown, Con't

A massive setback for the Justice Department's fraud case against the Trump Organization and Donald Trump, as the two lead prosecutors have suddenly resigned, and grand jury proceedings have effectively been halted since the start of the year as new Manhattan US District Attorney Alvin Bragg has all but dropped the case.

The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned on Wednesday amid a monthlong pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The stunning development comes not long after the high-stakes inquiry appeared to be gaining momentum, and throws its future into serious doubt.

The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.

Mr. Pomerantz confirmed in a brief interview that he had resigned, but declined to elaborate. Mr. Dunne declined to comment.

Without Mr. Bragg’s commitment to move forward, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury, one of the people said. They have not questioned any witnesses in front of the grand jury for more than a month, essentially pausing their investigation into whether Mr. Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.

The precise reasons for Mr. Bragg’s pullback are unknown, and he has made few public statements about the status of the inquiry since taking office. In a statement responding to the resignations of the prosecutors, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg said that he was “grateful for their service” and that the investigation was ongoing.

Time is running out for this grand jury, whose term is scheduled to expire in April. Prosecutors can ask jurors to vote to extend their term, but generally avoid doing so. They also are often reluctant to impanel a new grand jury after an earlier one has heard testimony, because witnesses could make conflicting statements if asked to testify again.

And without Mr. Dunne, a high-ranking veteran of the office who has been closely involved with the inquiry for years, and Mr. Pomerantz, a leading figure in New York legal circles who was enlisted to work on it, the yearslong investigation could peter out.

The resignations, following the monthlong pause, mark a reversal after the investigation had recently intensified. Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, convened the grand jury in the fall, and prosecutors began questioning witnesses before his term concluded at the end of the year. (Mr. Vance did not seek re-election.)

In mid-January, reporters for The Times observed significant activity related to the investigation at the Lower Manhattan courthouse where the grand jury meets, with at least two witnesses visiting the building and staying inside for hours.

The witnesses were Mr. Trump’s longtime accountant and an expert in the real estate industry, according to people familiar with the appearances, which have not been previously reported. Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz also made regular appearances at the courthouse.

The burst of activity offered a sign that Mr. Bragg was forging ahead with the grand jury phase of the investigation, a final step before seeking charges.

But in recent weeks, that activity has ceased, and Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz have been seen only rarely.

This looks like a case where Bragg said that he wasn't going forward with the case after the previous DA, Cy Vance, empaneled a grand jury.  The lead prosecutors obviously wanted to continue. Whatever the conflict was, it's gotten so bad that both lead prosecutors have resigned.

This reeks. All of it. No wonder then that the NY state case against Trump has moved into a much more aggressive phase. Tish James's office would have been working with the Manhattan DA on this. Surely they got wind that Bragg was going to all but shut the federal case down.

 

I don't know who got to Bragg, or to Justice, but both lead prosecutors resigning means that can't be swept away easily.  There's a lot more to this story.

How much of it we'll ever know, I have no idea.

Ukraine In The Membrane, GOP Edition

Republicans find themselves caught between how much they hate Biden and love being the righteous good guys, how much they love the idea of the American military rolling in to save the day, and how much they've been compromised by Putin over the years, and the lesson of the story is staggering around in the middle of the road only gets you hit by the semi.

While Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine this week stress-tests the Biden administration, it’s also forcing Republicans to confront their own divisions.

The GOP is all over the map politically, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw his own boundaries. Former President Donald Trump privately has signaled a split with more isolationist voices from the MAGA wing of the party who have excused Russia’s aggression, who themselves are at odds with more establishment Republicans over how to confront Russian aggression, if at all.

To an extent, these camps reflect a new evolution of long-standing GOP foreign policy factionalism. But as Putin moves troops into Ukraine, Republicans’ divergent approaches to the crisis are complicating their pushback on President Joe Biden’s response to the crisis.

Trump told an adviser recently that he doesn’t think Putin should be able to take Ukraine — even just from a real estate standpoint — and that he sees the Russian leader’s current actions as an attempt to steamroll Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Trump said Putin has sized up Biden and decided that he isn’t strong enough to stop Russia from rolling into Kyiv, this person recalled, adding that the former president has also blamed Biden for poking the bear by tying his legacy too closely to expanding NATO and to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Publicly and privately, he has described the current standoff as a problem for which he is the lone solution.

“This never would have happened with us had I been in office — not even thinkable,” Trump said in a Tuesday radio interview, describing Putin’s recognition of Ukrainian separatist regions as “savvy.”

Putin “sees this opportunity. I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, ‘You can’t do it, you’re not going to do it,’” Trump added. “But I could see that he wanted it. … They say, ‘Oh, Trump was nice to Russia.’ I wasn’t nice to Russia.”

Even as Trump portrays himself as better-equipped to counter Putin, the majority of congressional Republicans are backing Biden’s vow to impose crushing sanctions on Russia after its troops entered eastern Ukraine on Tuesday. Some have even praised Biden’s moves, like the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Eastern Europe to boost NATO’s defenses.

But a vocal GOP minority on and off Capitol Hill — represented by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, among others — has taken a third path, actively arguing against any U.S. involvement in the region while still dinging Biden. They argue that expanding the U.S. commitment to NATO is a mistake, and that the president should instead focus on countering China and securing America’s southern border.

That discordant chorus is making it harder for Republicans to craft a unified message on Russia the way it did during last year’s chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan or during Putin’s invasion of Crimea when Barack Obama was president in 2014.

 

Now this confusion won't last much longer. Now that Daddy Trump has weighed in, Republicans are going to follow his lead and attack Biden mercilessly while praising Putin, or they'll meet the same fate as Liz Cheney and they know it.

Rick Scott's little 11-point plan earlier this week gave that particular game away.

No, by this Sunday and the talking head shows, you'll see a dozen Very Serious Republicans all telling us that Putin invading Ukraine is not our problem, and that the real issue is Them Illegals™.

Of course, if things get significantly worse in Ukraine, all bets are off.

President Joe Biden's administration has informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of intelligence assessing that Russia is preparing to conduct a full-scale invasion of the neighboring country within the next 48 hours, U.S. intelligence officials have revealed to Newsweek.

"The President of Ukraine has been warned Russia will highly likely begin an invasion within 48 hours based on U.S. intelligence," a U.S. official with direct knowledge told Newsweek.

"Additionally," the U.S. official added, "reporting from aircraft observers indicates Russia violated Ukrainian airspace earlier today, flying possible reconnaissance aircraft for a short period over Ukraine."

A source close to Zelenskyy's government also confirmed to Newsweek that such a warning was received, but noted that this was the third time in a month Kyiv was told to prepare for imminent large-scale military action order by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

We'll see.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

It turns out that at least when pollsters ask, Americans are very much against banning books in schools and libraries for political reasons because it's screamingly un-American and all that, but it doesn't mean things are coming up roses.

Americans overwhelmingly reject the idea of banning books about history or race. One reason for that: a big majority also say teaching about the history of race in America makes students understand what others went through.

Large majorities — more than eight in 10 — don't think books should be banned from schools for discussing race and criticizing U.S. history, for depicting slavery in the past or more broadly for political ideas they disagree with.

We see wide agreement across party lines, and between White and Black Americans on this. Parents feel the same as the wider public.

Four in 10 believe teaching about race in America makes people more racially tolerant today, too, well outpacing the few who think it does the opposite. But not everyone sees a direct link between understanding and racial tolerance today, as less than half of those who think it promotes understanding feel it also translates into tolerance now.

And Americans are okay with the broader notion of public schools teaching about ideas and historical events that might make some students uncomfortable. By contrast, the idea that teaching about race makes students feel guilty about past generations or makes them less racially tolerant today gets little traction with most Americans.

Another reason, perhaps, behind these large majorities is that Americans do overwhelmingly believe racism has been a problem in U.S. history.

Big majorities also believe racism continues to be a problem today.

To the extent that this view is voiced by a smaller majority than the one that says racism was a problem in history, we find some who see it having moved from a major problem in the past to a lesser one now. They also believe the U.S. has made progress in dealing with racism. And they also believe teaching about it promotes understanding.

We do, however, start to see differences by race and party over how much history about Black Americans should be taught in schools now. Black Americans overwhelmingly think too little is taught. Political party divides White Americans, with most White Democrats agreeing that it's too little and White Republicans more likely to say it's the right amount.

And when specifically asked about Critical Race Theory, here's where we see very partisan splits, particularly among those who've heard about it, and those who have not.

Only one-third of Americans have heard a lot about it. These numbers are much higher among self-described conservatives, and among Republicans, likely reflecting the emphasis on it from their party members and candidates.

 

More than 80% of Black folk believe that both racism was a problem in the American past, and that the problem still exists today.  Only half of white Americans do as far as today.

Dems have a 81% favorable view of Critical Race Theory as a whole, while just 13% of Republicans do.

Still a long way to go.

Last Call For The Paxton Plan

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is declaring gender-affirming health care procedures for children as abuse, and he says his office will prosecute parents, doctors, and caregivers to see the procedures "halted".

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said in a statement that gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, including hormone therapy, puberty blockers and sex reassignment procedures, are abuse.

Texas state Rep. Matt Krause (R) wrote to Paxton to inquire about whether treatment for transgender youth could be considered child abuse.

In an opinion released Monday, Paxton said, "There is no doubt that these procedures are 'abuse' under Texas law, and thus must be halted."

"The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. I'll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans."

"While you refer to these procedures as 'sex changes,' it is important to note that it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception," he wrote.

Paxton added that "the prevalence of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has never been estimated, and there is no scientific consensus that these sterilizing procedures and treatments even serve to benefit minor children dealing with gender dysphoria."

The United States has seen an increase in Republican-led efforts to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. There have also been efforts to prohibit transgender children, specifically transgender girls, from participating on a sports team that corresponds with their gender identity.

Medical professionals, the LGBT community and transgender advocates have stated that if transgender children don't receive gender-affirming health care, they are at higher risk to suffer negative mental health consequences and even suicide.

Some studies have shown access to puberty blockers can decrease the risk of suicide in transgender teens, who are already at higher risk for suicide than their cisgender peers.

A spokespeople for the state Department of Family and Protective Services and Texas Health and Human Services told The Dallas Morning News that the agencies would be reviewing the opinion.

 

So yes, Paxton believes the full power of the state should be brought to bear in order to "save" kids from gender transitioning.

 

Meanwhile, Paxton remains under a federal bribery and corruption investigation, and he's apparently trying to defect attention away from this story this week.

Four former aides who reported Attorney General Ken Paxton to the FBI for alleged bribery are now accusing him of lying about his legal troubles while facing a tough reelection bid.

In a rare public statement on Monday, the ex-employees said “their preference was to remain silent while the wheels of justice turned.”

“However, in recent weeks, Paxton has made numerous false and misleading public statements that we feel obligated to correct,” said the former deputy attorneys general James “Blake” Brickman, J. Mark Penley, and Ryan Vassar and the agency’s former law enforcement director David Maxwell.

As Paxton seeks a third term as the state’s top lawyer, he faces three GOP challengers who are hammering him over the FBI corruption probe spurred by his former staffers.

Paxton has denied any wrongdoing. No federal charges have been filed.

In recent interviews with conservative media, Paxton said he doesn’t know the specific allegations against him and threw the blame back on his former aides, saying they are the ones who broke the law. The Republican also accused the FBI of infiltrating his office.

The former staffers say none of that is true.

“We confronted Ken Paxton about his and his agency’s corrupt and criminal conduct, and, when he would not abide by the law, we reported him to the FBI,” they said. “Paxton is under criminal investigation, not the whistleblowers.”

 

Paxton is trying to dodge bribery charges and wants to stay in office, seeing the governor's mansion in his future. If that road leads over the corpses of young Texan teens who thought it was better to take their own lives than the seek the care they needed because Paxton deemed it illegal, that's okay with this asshole.

 

Remember, Republicans do not care who their policies kill, because dead people can't vote for them anyway.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The three Georgia men convicted by the state in November for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery faced a federal trial this month on hate crime, civil rights violation and kidnapping charges, and all three men were convicted on all counts today by a jury.

A federal jury has found three White men guilty of committing a hate crime and other violations when they chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery two years ago, determining they were motivated by racial animus because he was Black.

The trial focused on a history of racist and offensive statements from Gregory McMichael, 66, Travis McMichael, 36, and William “Roddie” Bryan, 52.

Tuesday’s conviction, after just a couple of hours of jury deliberation, represents a victory for the U.S. Department of Justice, which has vowed to more aggressively prosecute hate crimes, and for civil rights groups that have demanded greater accountability in racially motivated attacks against Blacks and other minorities.

The killings of Arbery, George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, all of whom were Black, prompted mass demonstrations across the country two years ago. The charges against the McMichaels and Bryan marked the first time prosecutors charged anyone with a hate crime in connection with one of those slayings.

The jury began deliberating Monday afternoon, and adjourned after about two hours. Soon after reconvening Tuesday morning, jurors sent word they had a verdict. The found the men guilty of all charges: hate crimes and attempted kidnapping for all three defendants, and a weapons violation for the McMichaels.

All three men already had been convicted of state murder charges and sentenced to life in prison, with Bryan eligible for parole after 30 years. U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood will determine their federal sentences.

In a case that hinged on proving the defendants’ state of mind, prosecutors argued that the men’s prejudice helped explain why they erroneously viewed Arbery, 25, as a potential criminal when they cut him off in pickup trucks and threatened him with guns in a Georgia neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020.

The government presented evidence from 20 witnesses, many of whom testified about racially derogatory text messages, social media posts and remarks from the three men in which they disparaged Black people.

“All three defendants told you loud and clear, in their own words, how they feel about African Americans,” prosecutor Tara Lyons told the jury, made up of eight White people, three Black people and one Hispanic person. “Yes, race, racism, racial discrimination — those can all be very difficult topics to discuss. But the facts of this case are not difficult.”

Defense lawyers maintained that the men were trying to stop and question Arbery not because of his race, but because the McMichaels suspected him of trespassing at a neighbor’s property in their coastal Georgia subdivision.

Neighbors, including the McMichaels, had seen surveillance videos of a man, later identified as Arbery, exploring the property several times in the weeks leading up to the shooting. Gregory McMichael recognized Arbery as the man in the video as he jogged past McMichael’s house, defense lawyers said, prompting the former police officer and his son to chase Arbery in a pickup truck.

Bryan, a neighbor, joined the chase in his own truck after witnessing the commotion.

“The government hasn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt that race was a motivating factor,” Amy Lee Copeland, a lawyer for Travis McMichael, said during her closing argument.

 

The jury disagreed and rang all three of these bastards up.

Multiple life sentences with hopefully no hope of parole is alright with me, showing people there is a ruinous cost for taking a Black life because we matter.

Justice cannot be served here, justice would be Ahmaud Arbery still alive. Accountability and punishment is the best we can do here, and it was done.

Black Lives Matter.

The Batboy Manifesto

Since Senate GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell is smart enough to realize that telling the voters all that they stand to lose under a Republican-controlled Senate comes after they bamboozle the bozos at the ballot box, Florida Sen. Rick Scott is there to clue everybody in on the GOP crypto-fascist agenda as head of the Senate GOP re-election campaign, and I can hear Mitch's teeth grinding from here.

Senate Republican leaders have no plans to release an alternative agenda as they try to win back the majority this fall. So Rick Scott is pursuing his own plan.

The Florida Republican senator is devising a conservative blueprint for Republicans to enact should they win Senate and House majorities this fall. Among Scott’s priorities: completing the border wall and naming it after former President Donald Trump, declaring “there are two genders,” ending any reference to ethnicity on government forms and limiting most federal government workers — including members of Congress — to 12 years of service.

It’s a bold move for the first-term senator and National Republican Senatorial Committee chair. But Scott said the 31-page GOP agenda he’s crafted is separate from his work chairing the party’s campaign arm, adding that it’s “important to tell people what we’re gonna do.” It’s a clear break from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has declined to release a GOP agenda heading into the midterms.

“Hopefully, by doing this, we’ll have more of a conversation about what Republicans are going to get done. Because when we get the majority, I want to get something done,” Scott said in an interview. “There’s things that people would rather not talk about. I’m willing to say exactly what I’m going to do. I think it’s fair to the voter.”

The 11-point plan is a mix of longtime Republican positions, such as enacting a national voter ID law and shrinking the federal government, combined with culture war politics that define many GOP voters in the pro-Trump wing of the party. Scott said no one should be surprised that he’s devising his own plans, given his past record.

And the plans carry some risk. It’s not at all clear that the GOP would unify around Scott’s proposals, which include many ideas that would struggle to attract Democratic support, could alienate some independent voters and could even split the GOP. Scott acknowledged as much in introducing his priorities, arguing they may “strike fear in the heart of some Republicans.”

Perhaps even more notable than the plans themselves is that Scott is taking a big gamble just as he enters the most high-profile stretch of his political career. It’s not every day the NRSC chair introduces a policy platform.

Though he comes across as soft-spoken and low-key in person, Scott has thrown himself with zeal into GOP controversy. Most notably, Scott objected last year to certification of President Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania. And last week he stymied quick consideration of an overwhelmingly bipartisan postal reform bill.

Scott will be one of the most visible Republicans as he leads the push to take back the majority, and he’s offering a marked contrast from McConnell. When asked in January what the party’s agenda was, McConnell responded: “I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

“There’s things that people would rather not talk about. I’m willing to say exactly what I’m going to do. I think it’s fair to the voter.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the National Republic Senatorial Committee

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also plans to release his own agenda in the coming weeks. And while Scott did not criticize McConnell and said he maintains “a very good working relationship” with the GOP leader, he clearly believes there is a void to fill in the battle for the upper chamber.

“As a general rule, you know, probably this year’s election is going to be a lot about the Biden agenda. But I do believe we’re going to win,” Scott said. “We ought to have a plan and what we’re trying to get done when we get the majority.”

 

The plan is basically the heart of MAGA white supremacy, literally eliminating race from government forms, declaring that there are "only two genders", finishing the border wall and naming it after Trump, declaring that Americans should "welcome God into all aspects of our lives" and the big one, "eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress." 

 

It's a ludicrous platform that  screams white supremacist fascism, an America where anyone who isn't white, "Judeo-Christian", and cisgender literally has no place in the MAGA future of Rick Scott's America. Non-white folk and non-gender conforming folk simply vanish.

And yet the notion that this will split Republicans in any way is laughable. This presentation was designed for one man, Donald Trump, and it's Rick Scott's opening bid to replace McConnell as Senate GOP leader in January with Trump's support. 

For anyone else, the threat is clear: get on our side now, because eventually we'll win and enact this as law...

Ukraine In The Membrane, Now Bracing For Pain

After an alarmingly belligerent speech this evening where Russian Vladimir Putin declared that the "breakaway republics" in Ukraine would be given Russian military support (and throwing years of diplomacy out of the window, he does that a lot) he apparently ordered 150,000 or so Russian troops on the border with Ukraine to come on in and say hi.

 

The Kremlin has ordered Russia’s defense ministry to deploy troops in two Russia-backed separatist territories that have loomed large in the conflict over Ukraine.

Moscow announced that it would carry out “peacekeeping functions” in decrees published late Monday, shortly after President Vladimir V. Putin told his nation that he had decided to recognize Russia-backed separatists in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

It was not immediately certain whether the Russian troops would remain only on the territory controlled by the separatist republics, or whether they would seek to capture the rest of the two Ukrainian regions whose territory they claim.

And so it was unclear if a long-feared Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine had begun. The separatists might have invited Russian forces in, but neither Ukraine nor the rest of the world views the so-called republics as anything but Ukrainian territory.

While Mr. Putin’s ultimate plans remain a mystery, a full invasion would constitute the largest military action in Europe since World War II.

By seeking to redraw the post-Cold War boundaries of Europe and force Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit, Mr. Putin is attempting nothing less than to upend the security structure that has helped maintain an uneasy peace on the continent for the past three decades.

Now edging toward the twilight of his political career, Mr. Putin, 69, is determined to burnish his legacy and to correct what he has long viewed as one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century: the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Asserting Moscow’s power over Ukraine, a country of 44 million people that was previously part of the bloc and shares a 1,200-mile border with Russia, is part of his aim of restoring what he views as Russia’s rightful place among the world’s great powers, the United States and China.

Mr. Putin has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, and insists that Moscow’s military buildup is a reaction to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.

Essentially, he appears intent on winding back the clock 30 years, to just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

The US is responding with sanctions on the breakaway groups, but not on Russia. Yet. Still, this is going to get out of hand, very quickly, if things go wrong here, and yeah, we've got Russian troops in Ukraine.

I assume we're going to have a UN Security Council emergency meeting within days, but by then, well. Smart observers will notice that this is a repeat of Putin's 2008 invasion of Georgia.

Of course, maybe Putin doesn't have the adamant hold on everything like he used to.

Putin may hope to provoke an armed response from Ukraine that would provide a pretext for a larger assault. But the initial “peacekeeping” move into Donetsk and Luhansk was limited, and a senior Biden administration official was careful to avoid describing it as an invasion, noting that Russian forces have been operating covertly in the two enclaves for nearly eight years.

The Biden administration seemed to be calibrating its response, reacting less sharply to Putin’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk than did some other world leaders. The administration clearly wants to leave the door open for Moscow to stop short of an attack on Ukraine that is opposed not only by a unified NATO alliance but — perhaps more sobering for the Russian leader — by China as well.

Putin is “the ultimate political performance artist,” as Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy put it in a new biography. Monday’s carefully staged events evoked both the majesty of imperial Russia and the pettiness and paranoia of its modern-day leader.

The day’s events began with a televised command performance of Putin’s security council in the ornate Kremlin chamber. Putin asked each of his ministers for their recommendation about recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk. Many responses were dutifully on script, but there were several surprises.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia’s demands for security guarantees were “not an ultimatum,” and he seemed ready to meet Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for more talks. Lavrov also conceded NATO’s unity, advising Putin that at this past weekend’s Munich Security Conference, “every Western representative declared their absolute commitment to a unified approach,” which “confirmed that we need to negotiate with Washington.”

Some of Putin’s other ministers fed his passion to subdue Kyiv. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Ukraine could obtain nuclear weapons and pose a greater threat than Iran or North Korea. And Nikolai Patrushev, head of the security council, said Western nations “are hiding their true goal — to destroy the Russian federation,” a favorite Putin theme.

But the big surprise came when Putin quizzed Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service. Naryshkin advised that threatening to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk would be useful leverage for implementing the 2015 Minsk agreements to settle the conflict in the eastern region. Russia has claimed to support Minsk, but Monday’s recognition of the two breakaway enclaves as independent will probably derail any chance for the agreement. In response to Naryshkin’s answers, Putin got antsy.

What followed was a rare Kremlin moment of quasi-dissent. “Speak clearly, do you support recognition?” demanded Putin. “I will,” answered his spy chief. “You will, or you do?” demanded Putin. When Naryshkin waffled and said he would support “bringing them into Russia,” Putin shot back, “That’s not what we are discussing. Do you support recognizing independence?” To which the vexed spymaster answered, “yes.”

The SVR chief may have been rattled by the astonishing ability of U.S. intelligence to read (and publicize) Russian intelligence plans about Ukraine. Whatever the reason, Max Seddon, Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times who translated the exchange in Twitter posts, noted that the session was “like the finale of the Sopranos.”

 

One thing's for sure, like the seminal HBO drama, we'll be talking about this day for quite some time to come, if not years later, and what it all ultimately meant.