Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

My first question of course in this week's half-assed quarter-assed attempt on President Biden's life is "Where was this terrorist radicalized?"

 

A 19-year-old Missouri man, accused of driving a truck into barriers near the White House, made incriminating statements that have led investigators to believe he was seeking to harm the president, officials said Tuesday.

The driver was Sai Varshith Kandula of Chesterfield, U.S. Park Police said Tuesday morning.

The charges against Kandula for allegedly “threatening to kill, kidnap, inflict harm on a president, vice president, or family member,” stem from statements he made to multiple law enforcement agencies, according to a Secret Service representative.

The suspect was interviewed by Secret Service investigators Monday night, the agency representative said, during the ongoing probe that also involves United States Park Police, the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police.

Kandula was further charged with assault with a dangerous weapon, reckless operation of a motor vehicle and trespassing.

Authorities said the preliminary investigation indicates Kandula “intentionally crashed” into the bollards outside Lafayette Park. A Nazi flag was seized by authorities at the scene of the incident.

No one was injured.

A law enforcement official told NBC News that the suspect made threatening statements about the White House at the scene but was quickly detained. The truck was found to contain no weapons or explosives, the official said, without providing further details about the incident.

Asked for their reaction, the official said: “I don’t think there’s any place for a Nazi flag or the statements that he made.”

 

As the charged suspect was of South Asian descent, a reminder that you don't have to be white to be a white supremacist, nor do you have to be white to think supporting actual Nazis is a "good" idea. 

"There's always crazies out there" and yes there are, but not all of the crazies drive a U-haul truck into the White House traffic barriers designed to stop exactly this kind of thing, either.

Tales Of The Shattered Rainbow, Con't

Montana Republicans have declared that trans and non-binary folks simply do not exist under a new state law defining only male and female sexes will be recognized.

 

Republican Governor Greg Gianforte has signed a bill defining the word “sex” in state law as only male or female — joining Kansas and Tennessee, which have similar laws that LGBTQ+ advocates argue will deny legal recognition to nonbinary and transgender people.

Medical professionals say the laws also ignore that some people are born as intersex — a term that encompasses about 60 conditions in which a person is born with genitalia, reproductive organs, chromosomes and/or hormone levels that don’t fit typical definitions of male or female.

The sponsor of the bill said the change is needed to clarify from a legal standpoint that “sex” and “gender” don’t mean the same thing.

The Montana bill “is an attempt to erase trans, nonbinary and two-spirit people from the code, thereby removing the rights, privileges and considerations that trans, nonbinary and Two Spirit people would have under the law,” said SK Rossi last month, testifying against the legislation on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign.

“Two-spirit” is a Native American term for people with both male and female spirits.

The bill, which Gianforte signed on Friday, was approved during a legislative session that also passed a ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors and saw transgender lawmaker Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr expelled from the House floor, following a protest against Republican lawmakers who had silenced her.

Other states have or are considering adopting similar legislation to Montana’s, to define “sex,” which would block residents from changing the identifying labels on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses. Laws in Kansas and Tennessee are scheduled to take effect on July 1, while Montana’s would take effect on Oct. 1.

Transgender people opt to change the sex on their birth certificates and driver’s licenses so their documentation matches their identity.

Lauren Wilson, president of the Montana chapter of the American Academy of Pediatricians, said the bill’s assertion that there are exactly two sexes isn’t true from a medical standpoint.

The bill defines female as having XX chromosomes, and a reproductive and endocrine system that produces or would produce ova, or eggs. Male is defined as having XY chromosomes and a biological system that produces or would produce sperm.

The bill was amended to say that anyone who would fall under the definition of either male or female, “but for a biological or genetic condition,” would fall under the initial determination of male or female.

“The amendment added to address intersex people actually makes the bill more inaccurate as well,” Wilson said.

A bill before the Texas legislature was amended to allow a delay in reporting the biological sex of a child if it could not be determined at birth.

The Montana bill “has no basis in science and seeks to reduce every single one of our existences to our reproductive capacity,” argued Keegan Medrano, the policy director for the ACLU of Montana.

 

As I've said before, the Republican plan is to literally define away the existence of LGBTQ+ folks, which makes it far easier to deny them basic human rights, if not to get rid of them completely.  They absolutely want to grant no more than provisional status, rights, and existence to minority groups while screaming that white straight "Christians" are the "most oppressed people in the country's history".

 

Again, history from 90 years ago in Germany tells us exactly how this turns out.  The next step will be to criminalize the existence of enby and other intersex folks.

I'd say "just watch" but nobody should do that, we need to fight this on all fronts.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith has issued a subpoena for Trump's foreign business dealings during his White House tenure, implying that Trump's illegal trove of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago may not have only been shown to foreign entities, but that Trump directly profited from them, something I've been saying was a distinct possibility from the start.

 

Federal prosecutors overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified documents have issued a subpoena for information about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in foreign countries since he took office, according to two people familiar with the matter.

It remains unclear precisely what the prosecutors were hoping to find by sending the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, or when it was issued. But the subpoena suggests that investigators have cast a wider net than previously understood as they scrutinize whether he broke the law in taking sensitive government materials with him upon leaving the White House and then not fully complying with demands for their return.

The subpoena — drafted by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith — sought details on the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development dealings in seven countries: China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman, according to the people familiar with the matter. The subpoena sought the records for deals reached since 2017, when Mr. Trump was sworn in as president.

The Trump Organization swore off any foreign deals while he was in the White House, and the only such deal Mr. Trump is known to have made since then was with a Saudi-based real estate company to license its name to a housing, hotel and golf complex that will be built in Oman. He struck that deal last fall just before announcing his third presidential campaign.

The push by Mr. Smith’s prosecutors to gain insight into the former president’s foreign business was part of a subpoena — previously reported by The New York Times — that was sent to the Trump Organization and sought records related to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of his golf clubs. (Mr. Trump’s arrangement with LIV Golf was reached well after he removed documents from the White House.)

Collectively, the subpoena’s demand for records related to the golf venture and other foreign ventures since 2017 suggests that Mr. Smith is exploring whether there is any connection between Mr. Trump’s deal-making abroad and the classified documents he took with him when he left office.

It is unclear what material the Trump Organization has turned over in response to the subpoena or whether Mr. Smith has obtained any separate evidence supporting that theory. But since the start of their investigation, prosecutors have sought to understand not only what sorts of materials Mr. Trump removed from the White House, but also why he might have taken them with him.

Among the government documents discovered in Mr. Trump’s possession were some related to Middle Eastern countries, according to a person familiar with Mr. Smith’s work. And when the F.B.I. executed a search warrant in August 2022 at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida, among the items recovered was material related to President Emmanuel Macron of France, according to court records.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to emails seeking comment. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

If there is such a link, and Jack Smith is definite;y digging into it, Trump will have literally been caught selling out his country to foes like China and to NATO allies like France and Turkey to line his own pockets, and that's not going to end well for him at all. Even the MAGA faithful will have to find some hesitation to back Trump selling state secrets to Beijing.

Which would mean of course that all of Trump's "China Joe" talk was -- surprise! -- projection of his own criminal activity.

If Smith's excavation pans out, this is how Trump gets what he deserves. And if Trump gets re-elected, killing this probe is his first order of business.