Buckeye Breakthrough

Both state constitutional amendments on the ballot in Ohio last night passed overwhelmingly as voters in the Buckeye state approved the right to abortion, and legalized marijuana for recreational use.

Ohio voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to enshrine protections for reproductive health services, including abortion, in the state constitution — the latest in a post-Roe streak of ballot box wins for the abortion rights movement.

The Associated Press called the race less than two hours after polls closed, and early counts showed the abortion rights initiative leading by double digits.

The results follow a long, bitter and expensive campaign that shows the continuing resonance of the issue more than a year after Roe v. Wade was overturned and the strength of ballot measures as a tool for advancing abortion rights in GOP-dominated states.

The resounding victory comes despite a myriad of advantages for the anti-abortion camp heading into Election Day.

Gov. Mike DeWine cut ads for the “No” campaign calling the ballot measure “extreme,” and suggested he would push the legislature to add rape and incest exemptions to the state’s six-week ban if the referendum were defeated.

The official website for the GOP-controlled state legislature published posts claiming the amendment would “legalize abortion on demand at any stage of pregnancy” and allow for “the dismemberment of fully conscious children” — echoing the disputed talking points of the campaign against the amendment.

Secretary of State and Senate hopeful Frank LaRose also crafted a ballot summary that abortion rights supporters decried as biased and misleading — including changing the word “fetus” to “unborn child” and removing references to protections for non-abortion services like contraception and fertility treatments.

LaRose also spearheaded August’s failed special election that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution and his office purged tens of thousands of inactive voters from the rolls after early voting for the November election was already underway and the deadline to reregister had passed.

Anti-abortion groups campaigning against the amendment focused on many of the same arguments that failed in six other states’ abortion ballot fights last year — including claims, disputed by their opponents, that the measure’s passage would strip away parental consent laws and all limits on abortions later in pregnancy.

But Ohio conservatives also shaped their strategy in response to those 2022 losses. They invested, for example, in targeted outreach to Black voters, students, and people who identify as “pro-choice” and encouraged early and absentee voting.

They were outraised, however, by abortion rights groups, which raked in triple the donations and purchased significantly more TV time. Most of the money on both sides came from out of state, with a group affiliated with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America providing more than half of the funding for the anti-abortion campaign and several national groups pouring millions into the abortion rights campaign’s coffers, including the ACLU, the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Open Society Policy Center.

Ahh, but with Republicans controlling all three branches of government in Ohio, the fight is far, far from over.  Expect massive amounts of hoops for women to jump though, if not the existing six week ban to be ruled constitutional somehow.

These are, after all, Ohio Republicans, the most crooked state party in America.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Former Trump legal adviser, Big Lie architect and Georgia indicted RICO co-conspirator John Eastman is much closer to losing his bar license in California after a judge determined that he violated ethics standards in Trump's January 6th coup attempt.

 

A California judge made a “preliminary finding” Thursday that attorney John Eastman breached professional ethics when he aided Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election, a significant milestone in the lengthy proceedings over whether Eastman should lose his license to practice law.

Eastman said Thursday that the extensive disbarment proceedings — which delved deeply into his allegations of election fraud and irregularities, as well as his fringe theories about the vice president’s power to unilaterally choose the winner of the presidential election — had strengthened his belief that the 2020 election was tainted. Now, state bar officials are preparing to present “aggravation” evidence aimed at justifying their call to strip Eastman, a veteran conservative attorney who once clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, of his law license.

The proceedings, which began in June, featured 30 days of testimony from witnesses that included former Vice President Mike Pence’s legal counsel Greg Jacob, former Bush administration attorney John Yoo, officials from numerous state election offices, statisticians and data analysts that Eastman relied on for some of his claims of widespread election irregularities, and constitutional law experts who delved into the history of the counting of electoral votes.

Eastman took the stand for more than a dozen hours throughout the trial and described his interactions with Trump in a Jan. 4, 2021, Oval Office meeting; his work with other members of Trump’s legal team like Boris Epshteyn and Kenneth Chesebro; and the drafting of his infamous memos describing options for Pence to assert control of the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021.

Eastman’s fight for his bar license comes as he is also fending off criminal charges in Georgia, where he was charged alongside Trump and 17 others with a sweeping racketeering conspiracy aimed at subverting the state’s election laws in 2020.

Eastman said he never considered the impact of his words on Jan. 6, 2021, when he addressed the crowd of Trump supporters gathered near the White House ahead of their march to the Capitol. He said the crowd was already convinced the election was stolen and was there to see Trump, not him, and did not view his remarks as somehow “solidifying” their anger.

“I didn’t have any thought about that one way or the other,” he said on the witness stand. “My point in speaking on Jan. 6 was to raise concerns about illegality in the conduct of the election that may well have led to the certification of somebody who did not win the election.”

Investigators for the California bar spent much of the trial delving deeply into Eastman’s claims of fraud that he used in a failed attempt to convince state legislatures to send “contingent” presidential electors to Congress on Jan. 6. They argued that Eastman relied on obviously flawed methods and assumptions meant to secure a predetermined outcome: that Trump should remain in power.

Throughout his testimony, Eastman emphasized that he never showed Trump his two-page and six-page memos outlining options for Pence, which he said were merely meant as “internal” documents outlining “scenarios” to be considered by Trump’s lawyers. He said he recalled only sharing the memos with Epshteyn and Chesebro before meeting with Trump on Jan. 4, 2021.

 

Eastman should be doing some time in a Georgia correctional facility soon, but being disbarred in California is just the icing on this grungy cake as far as I'm concerned. The people who helped Trump try to steal the Oval Office should be doing significant time, and they should be punished severely for what they tried to do.

We'll see if they are.

Last Call For Throwing The Book At Them, Con't

The book-burning fascists from Moms for Liberty are trying to throw as many school librarians in prison for "trafficking porn" as they can in Florida.

 

Two members of Moms for Liberty, a right-wing activist group, have reported several Florida school librarians to law enforcement. They claimed they had evidence that librarians were distributing "pornography" to minors and requested that law enforcement officers be dispatched. This represents a serious escalation of the tactics deployed by members of Moms for Liberty against school librarians.

On October 25, Jennifer Tapley, a member of the Santa Rosa County chapter of Moms for Liberty and a candidate for school board, contacted the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office. "I've got some evidence a crime was committed," Tapley said in an audio recording of the call obtained by Popular Information through a public records request. "Pornography given to a minor in a school. And I would like to make a report with somebody and turn over the evidence." Tapley made the call from the lobby of the main office of the Santa Rosa County Sheriff's Office in Milton, Florida.

She told the dispatcher that she did not want to provide her name because she was "afraid of people getting mad at me for doing this." Tapley said that she would tell the Deputy Sheriff her name, but she didn't want "any public records with her name on it because then people could look it up."

In an interview with Popular Information, Tapley said she was "scrolling through Facebook" this summer and saw "a video of a mom reading a book" that was "really disgusting." She later learned that there was a Moms for Liberty chapter in her area addressing the issue and joined the group. As a member of the group, she learned that local schools had "some really shocking pornographic books in our libraries."

Tapley was accompanied at the Sheriff's Office by Tom Gurski, who is also active in the local Moms for Liberty chapter. Soon, Deputy Sheriff Tyler Mabire and another officer arrived and interviewed the pair.

"The only reason we are here: A crime is being committed. It's a 3rd-degree felony. And we've got the evidence," Gurski said in a body cam video of the interview obtained by Popular Information. "The governor says this is child pornography. It's a serious crime," Tapley added. "It's just as serious as if I handed a playboy to [my child] right now, right here, in front of you. It's just as serious, according to the law." The video has been edited to protect the identity of a minor.

The "pornography" at issue is actually a popular young adult novel, Storm and Fury, by Jennifer L. Armentrout. The book, which is 512 pages, is mostly about humans and gargoyles fighting demons. The main character of the novel, Trinity, is 18 years old. There are some passages with sexual themes, including a few makeout sessions, and one where the main character almost has sex. In the 2020-21 academic year, the Florida Association of Media in Education (FAME), a professional association of Florida librarians, recommended Storm and Fury on its "Teen Reads" list. FAME says books on the list "engage" teens and "provide a spur to critical thinking." Barnes and Noble recommends the book for readers 14 to 18. It was also recommended for students by the School Library Journal.

 

If this counts as porn, everything does.

 

Which is the point. These fascist freaks want public school libraries, librarians, and in fact, puiblic schools gone. They want librarians, teachers, educators, administrators and everyone involved in running a school in prison and the schools destroyed.

 

Keep in mind that's the end game, and all this makes a sick amount of sense, doesn't it?

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump 2024 people are screaming from the rooftops that they will make mass arrests of Democrats and their voters in 2025 and at this point I have to assume that a whole lot of your friends and neighbors are going to spend the next year trying to get on Team Fascism so that they don't end up on the pogrom lists.

 

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not answer questions about specific actions under discussion. “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung said. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”

The discussions underway reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 91 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.

“This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in October. “And that means I can do that, too.”

Special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Biden have all said that Smith’s prosecution decisions were made independently of the White House, in accordance with department rules on special counsels.

Trump, the clear polling leader in the GOP race, has made “retribution” a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his own legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to right-wing Americans. He repeatedly tells his supporters that he is being persecuted on their behalf and holds out a 2024 victory as a shared redemption at their enemies’ expense.

 

Again, Trump is promising that he'll arrest Democrats and their supporters, maybe tens of thousands or more, and that he'll deploy the US military against Americans, and your friends and neighbors and co-workers are not only okay with this, they're actively rooting for it to happen.

And if the polls are any indication, a whole lot of people are considering being on the side that supports the coming fascism rather than resisting it. 

President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found.

The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.

Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.

Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.

Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years.

Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.

Add it all together, and Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada, six in Georgia, five in Arizona, five in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden held a 2-point edge in Wisconsin.

In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both deeply — and similarly — unpopular, according to the poll. But voters who overwhelmingly said the nation was on the wrong track are taking out their frustrations on the president.

 

We're about to hand this country back to an autocratic crook who will take endless revenge on anyone and everyone in sight in a massive purge of anyone even remotely critical of him backed by lethal military force, but it's okay because Joe Biden is old LOL.

 

Excusing the voters as ignorant doesn't work anymore. Trump is absolutely saying on a nearly weekly basis at rallies that he's going to hurt people. And the majority of the American people want it to happen. 

 

Biden needs to get his ass in gear and run like he's 10 points down.

 

Because right now?

 

He is.

Voters, by a 59 percent to 37 percent margin, said they better trusted Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on the economy, the largest gap of any issue. The preference for Mr. Trump on economic matters spanned the electorate, among both men and women, those with college degrees and those without them, every age range and every income level.

That result is especially problematic for Mr. Biden because nearly twice as many voters said economic issues would determine their 2024 vote compared with social issues, such as abortion or guns. And those economic voters favored Mr. Trump by a landslide 60 percent to 32 percent.

The findings come after Mr. Biden’s campaign has run millions of dollars in ads promoting his record, and as the president continues to tour the country to brag about the state of the economy. “Folks, Bidenomics is just another way of saying the American dream!” Mr. Biden declared on Wednesday on a trip to Minnesota.

Voters clearly disagree. Only 2 percent of voters said the economy was excellent.

"At least Trump made the trains run on time"is gonna be the epitaph of this country at this rate. And the kids? The kids want to go back to Trump.

Voters under 30 — a group that strongly voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 — said they trusted Mr. Trump more on the economy by an extraordinary 28 percentage-point margin after years of inflation and now high interest rates that have made mortgages far less affordable. Less than one percent of poll respondents under 30 rated the current economy as excellent, including zero poll respondents in that age group in three states: Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin.

“I actually had high hopes for Biden,” said Jahmerry Henry, a 25-year-old who packages liquor in Albany, Ga. “You can’t be worse than Trump. But then as the years go by, things happen with inflation, the war going on in Ukraine, recently Israel and I guess our borders are not secure at all.”

Now Mr. Henry plans to back Mr. Trump.

“I don’t see anything that he has done to benefit us,” said Patricia Flores, 39, of Reno, Nev., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but won’t support him again in 2024.

 

"You can't be worse than Trump", but they're going to vote for him anyhow. We really are going to hand this place back over to Trump for a second go and he'll finish the country off. The psychopathy and despair are real. The Zoomers who will never be able to afford a house are willing to roll the dice on the autocrat again. Hey, maybe he'll crash the housing market so they can buy cheap.

Of course, Biden siding America with the country openly asking why they can't nuke a civilian population because there are "no non-combatants in Gaza" doesn't exactly put him with the good guys, either, as awful as Trump is.

The rest of us have a lot of work to do in convincing others that's not the case. We know he's going to destroy the place.  Trump going to prison before the election might be the only thing that saves us.

On the other hand, having said all this...

Let's remember that the NY Times can definitely be wrong on this election.

And we've been down before a year out.

The larger point is we have an entire year. Let's not waste it.

 

Sunday Long Read: The School Shooting Survivor's Club

Our Sunday Long Read this week finds that we've had so many school shootings in America that there's now a dedicated support network for school principals to deal with the pain and death of what is becoming more and more an annual sacrifice ritual across the country to the Second Amendment.

IT WAS A cold, breezy morning in April 2019 when the club gathered for the first time. None of those present had asked to be part of this club, but they were the ones who answered its call, 12 men and five women, mostly strangers then.

They collected their coffees, took seats around the table in the conference room in Reston, Virginia, and looked at one another under the fluorescent lights.

Greg Johnson, the principal of a small Ohio high school called West Liberty-Salem, felt awkward. They all knew what they had in common. But do you ask about the awful thing right away, or wait?

Frank DeAngelis felt moved. Over the years, and with dread, the former principal of Columbine High School in Colorado had watched the ranks of his fellowship grow, had in fact called new members to tell them they’d joined what he dubbed the club where no one wants to join. Now here they were, so many in one room.

Ty Thompson felt guarded. A year after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, lawsuits and investigations loomed. He wasn’t sure what he could and couldn’t say.

One by one, the principals shared. When Johnson confessed that more than two years after the shooting at West Liberty-Salem he still wrestled with doubts about his ability to support his students and staff, he was relieved to see heads nodding. Thompson was struck by how immediately these strangers felt safe with one another, how some group members unloaded like it was therapy. They talked about the loss of young lives that haunted them, the guilt they felt as survivors, and how they questioned what they could have done differently. Someone asked: What are you doing for self-care? Silence. Then Johnson spoke up: “Who has time for self-care?” More heads nodded.

Andy McGill, Johnson’s assistant principal at West Liberty-Salem, remained quiet. As he listened to DeAngelis talk about Columbine and Thompson talk about Marjory Stoneman Douglas, what happened at his school began to seem trivial. No one had died during their shooting, thankfully. What was he doing in this room?

That night, McGill went to the hotel bar with a group that included DeAngelis. There, a former assistant principal from New York named Michael Bennett, who was shot confronting a gunman in 2004, began to express what McGill had been feeling—that there had been no fatalities at his school’s shooting and his presence here was a mistake. But DeAngelis cut him off with what would become one of the club’s party lines: You don’t compare tragedies. Trauma is trauma. At the next day’s meeting, McGill felt better. DeAngelis was right. The most important thing they could do was help others.

The club emerged from that 2019 meeting as the Principal Recovery Network (PRN), a support group for principals whose schools have experienced gun violence. Grimly, since the PRN was founded, both its workload and membership have grown—46 shootings occurred at K–12 schools in 2022, more than in any year since Columbine, according to Washington Post data. The PRN today is composed of 21 current and former leaders from schools including Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut; Marjory Stoneman Douglas; and Columbine. When gun violence strikes, the PRN reaches out to the principal, offering emotional support and advice on everything from how to reopen a school to how to commemorate the one-year mark. In 2022, the group released a handbook of its best practices: The NASSP Principal Recovery Network Guide to Recovery. But the most valuable resource the PRN offers may be its simplest: the opportunity to connect with others who have been through the same thing.

The principals realized at that first meeting in 2019 that while their shootings were different, many of their experiences were similar. As they led their communities forward, they faced common challenges, which unfolded in a similar sequence. Today, as the PRN, they offer their experiences as a guide, in hopes they might help others find smoother passage through. On the other side of the hardship, the principals promise, there can be healing.

But the story must begin with the horror. Because the horror, unfortunately, is how you join the club. 

 

More principals will join this club every month. More kids will join the ranks of those killed in these shootings. And more and more of us are throwing up our hands and accepting that this is how it has to be, and that the only solution is more and more death.

It doesn't have to be, but that starts with no electing the people who want to arm everyone and watch us shoot each other.

Last Call For The GOP Mask Slips Again...

 ..and Republicans finally admit that their "cure" for the antisemitism wave that they started is increased Islamophobia and collective punishment of Palestinians in the US.

 

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) introduced a bill Thursday that could ban Palestinians from entering the U.S. and possibly expel those who are already here.

Zinke, who served as secretary of the Interior Department under former President Trump, introduced legislation called the Safeguarding Americans from Extremism Act.

The legislation would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to halt granting visas, asylum and refuge for people who have a Palestinian Authority-issued passport. The bill would revoke the entrance or visa for individuals who came to the U.S. after Oct. 1.

“This legislation keeps America safe,” Zinke said. “I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States. This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen and it’s well deserved. Given the circumstances, the threats to our immigration system and the history of terrorists abusing refugee, asylum and visa processes all over the world, the requirements in this bill are necessary to keep Americans safe. This bill does exactly that.”

Zinke’s bill would bar DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas from granting Temporary Protected Status to people with the passport, along with refugee status and asylum. It would direct DHS to work with Customs Enforcement and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to “identify” and remove individuals “without lawful status, including newly revoked status.”

The legislation comes after GOP lawmakers issued a letter earlier in October to Mayorkas and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to revoke and deport students on temporary student visas who “have expressed support for Hamas” in the aftermath of the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,400 people dead.

Zinke’s bill has 10 co-sponsors — Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.), Aaron Bean (R-Fla.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), Clay Higgins (R-La.), Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Barry Moore (R-Ala.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

 

Of course, that's nothing compared to all the Republicans running for the White House, who all want to deport millions already in the country no matter where they are from, including Nikki Haley. 

OK, of the six to seven million that have come over since Biden did this — this is going to sound harsh — but you send them back. And the reason you send them back, the reason you send them back is because, my parents, they came here legally. They put in the time, they put in the price. I take care of my parents. They live with us. They’re 87 and 89. There’s not a time I’ve had dinner with my mom when she doesn’t say, ‘Are those people still crossing the border?’ And the reason is, they are offended by what’s happening on the border. And when you allow those six or seven million to come, to all those people who’ve done it the right way, you’re letting them jump the line.

 

So yeah, national immigration raids, mass deportations, families ripped apart. You may not like Biden. You should see the other guys, though...

Just Another Day In Gunmerica

Steve M. on how Gunmerica has worked for decades:

 

To the members of the gun community, the danger to democracy is a feature, not a bug. Gun absolutists don't want to live in a society where people who disagree with them -- on guns or on most other issues -- wield enough power to enact laws they don't like. Outside of blue states and big cities, gun absolutists have democracy right where they want it: Large majorities of Americans support tighter restrictions on gun ownership, but the vast majority of white people always vote Republican, so it's next to impossible to tighten gun laws.

Gun absolutists want some citizens to be intimidated. They say they just want criminals to be fearful (as well as the government), but they know that many of the people they detest are unlikely to own guns, and the power inequality is precisely what they're after. They want liberals and LGBTQ people and feminists to feel like second-class citizens. They want the option of intimidating protesters they disagree with, in a potentially deadly version of the hecklers' veto. And, obviously, they want to scare off anyone who might support laws making it harder to obtain and brandish weapons. Hey, what do you think "Try That in a Small Town" was all about? It sure as hell wasn't about democracy or upholding the First Amendment right to protest.

It's possible to imagine a society in which everyone lives the way gunners say they want everyone to live -- every law-abiding citizen across the political spectrum might accept our gun culture as unchangeable and might decide that it's necessary to own weapons, and to wear them in public at all times wherever that's legal. Liberals might reluctantly do this. Feminists and queers might do this. In theory, even gun control advocates might do this, telling themselves that while an extremely armed society is bad, it's clear that we already live in one, and until that changes, it's suicidal to go unarmed.

But the gunners wouldn't like that. They like the advantage they have over the rest of us. They enjoy our fear.

 

Adding, if you're Black or brown, owning a gun gets you killed even faster. Police don't bother to check if you're a law-abiding citizen practicing your Constitutional Second Amendment rights for home ownership of a firearm, legal concealed carry, or god forbid, open carry. You'd get executed on the spot.

 

Firearms are a privilege afforded to white Americans only. Everyone else gets murdered. This is why I don't own a firearm. It would make no positive difference to increase my survivability rate as a Black man in America, and in fact it would massively increase my odds of being shot and killed by law enforcement. 

Nobody with a firearm would ever see a Black civilian as a "good guy with a gun". Ever. A group of armed Black people practicing open carry in an open carry state would be butchered by police.

Think about that really hard.

In Republican red state America, in 2023, your rights are solely determined by your race (and gender, when we talk about women also being second-class status.) Your "inalienable" rights are provisional depending on the situation and person, and that includes the right to bear arms.

Spare me the whining about your Second Amendment rights, and talk about mine for once.

Sam Bankman-Fried Fried For Fraud

The jury in the fraud trial of cryptocurrency king Sam Bankman-Fried took less than a day to return a guilty verdict on seven counts involving billions of dollars stolen from investors.

Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on Thursday for his role in the collapse of crypto exchange FTX.

After 15 days of testimony and about four and a half hours of deliberations, jurors returned a verdict that found him guilty on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy.

Bankman-Fried looked sunken as the verdict was read out. After the jury was released, he stood, head bowed and shaking as his lawyer spoke in his ear. A few feet behind him, his parents stood watching. As Bankman-Fried was escorted out of the room, he turned back and smiled at his parents. His father, Joe Bankman, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. As their son left the room, Barbara Fried broke down in tears.

In remarks outside the Manhattan courthouse on Thursday, US Attorney Damian Williams lauded the jury’s verdict, saying the government has “no patience” for fraud and corruption.

“These players like Sam Bankman-Fried might be new, but this kind of fraud, this kind of corruption, is as old as time,” he said.

But Bankman-Fried’s attorney said they were “disappointed.”

“We respect the jury’s decision. But we are very disappointed with the result,” said lead defense attorney Mark Cohen in a statement. “Mr. Bankman Fried maintains his innocence and will continue to vigorously fight the charges against him.”

The sentencing hearing date will be March 28, 2024. He faces up to 110 years in prison.

Bankman-Fried was found guilty of stealing billions of dollars from accounts belonging to customers of his once-high-flying crypto exchange FTX. He was also found guilty of defrauding lenders to FTX’s sister company, the hedge fund Alameda Research, which held FTX customer funds in a bank account.

During his trial, Bankman-Fried said he learned in 2020 that FTX customer funds were held by Alameda but he did not take action to safeguard them.

When he later discovered in the fall of 2022 that Alameda owed $8 billion to FTX, no one was fired.

Other charges Bankman-Fried was found guilty of include defrauding investors in FTX and a money-laundering charge.

“Sam Bankman-Fried thought that he was above the law. Today’s verdict proves he was wrong,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a statement. “This case should send a clear message to anyone who tries to hide their crimes behind a shiny new thing they claim no one else is smart enough to understand: the Justice Department will hold you accountable.”

Sam here is facing decades in prison, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving little carbuncle of a man. It was a scheme from the start, and people lost tens, if not hundreds of billions in the collapse of his pyramid.

This is a guy who needs to be put in a box until the 22nd century. 

Phantasma Santos Lives Once More

The House vote to expel "George Santos" failed miserably on Wednesday, with more than 30 Democrats joining nearly all Republicans in voting to keep him in the House despite the dozens of federal felony charges.

 

Rep. George Santos easily survived a second attempt to expel him from Congress, with enough members voting Wednesday to defeat a push to oust him from office over his federal criminal indictments and other behavior.

The House voted 179-213 to reject a privileged resolution brought by Republicans in the New York delegation, well short of the two-thirds majority needed to make Santos the sixth member in the history of Congress to be purged from the chamber.

Only 24 Republicans joined the 155 Democrats who voted to expel Santos, fewer than the 31 Democrats who voted against the resolution. There were 19 present votes and 22 members who did not record a vote.

Some Republicans who did not support the resolution cited concerns that the criminal charges and a House Ethics Committee investigation are still pending.

Ethics Committee Chairman Michael Guest, R-Miss., said he voted present and pointed to a panel statement Tuesday that next steps in the probe would be announced before Nov. 17.

“So that’s why we wanted to let members know, not trying to influence in one way or the other, but also that we are getting close to being able to get something that we can release to the public and to the body as a whole,” Guest said.

Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., said he voted no on the resolution because Santos hasn’t been convicted. But he said that “some of this stuff will shake out in the weeks to come, and we’ll come back and expel him after he’s convicted.”

Santos, at the end of the floor debate on the resolution Wednesday, said the New York Republicans were acting as “judge, jury and executioner.”

The only two member expulsions in the last two centuries took place after the defendants had been convicted, Santos said, and “now is not the time to set a dangerous precedent.”

“I must warn my colleagues that voting for expulsion at this point would circumvent the judicial system’s right to due process that I’m entitled to and desanctify the long-held premise that one is presumed innocent until proven guilty,” Santos said.

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, R-N.Y., who brought the resolution and forced a vote on it, sought to address those concerns within the conference during the floor debate.

“If we are going to set a new precedent today that we are against lying fraudsters coming to the House of Representatives, well then I am all for that precedent,” D’Esposito said.

New York Republican Reps. Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler flanked D’Esposito on the floor, each offering harshly critical assessments of Santos’ lack of character and fitness to serve New York’s 3rd District.

“New Yorkers from Queens and Nassau Counties deserve better than George Santos — a total fraud and serial liar representing them in Congress,” LaLota said.

Santos is not properly representing his district because he has no committee assignments and “lacks the minimum amount of trust necessary of a member of Congress,” LaLota said.

Alone, Santos sat quietly, left leg crossed over his right periodically typing text into his phone.

Earlier in the day, D’Esposito, LaLota and Lawler, along with fellow New York delegation members Reps. Marc Molinaro and Brandon Williams, urged their conference to support the resolution despite the slim majority they hold. In a letter, they argued the issue is a “moral one” rather than one that is “political.”

 

I understand the Ethics Committee voting no or present as there's an ongoing investigation, but I'm baffled to see Dems like Mark Takano and Jaime Raskin, who have both called for Santos to resign, vote no on the resolution to expel him. It was, as the Roll Call article above says, Republicans who brought this to the floor. Raskin, Takano, and Democrats had that cover and voted no anyway.

The only thing I can think of is that ranking committee members like Takano (Veterans Affairs) and Raskin (Oversight) made a deal with the Clown Show to sink the censure resolutions against Democratic Squad member Rashida Tlaib and Marjorie Taylor Greene that followed the Santos expulsion vote.

All three measures failed, which meant all three were just for show. Hell, the MTG censure resolution didn't even get a vote.

But even the Beltway types are scrambling to find out what happened.

The Democratic breakaways flummoxed lawmakers on both sides of the aisle – especially since most Democrats voted for their own party's resolution to expel Santos in May."

What's gotten better since they made the motion to expel?" said Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.). "What's innocence has he achieved since they chastised us for not acting months ago? What's changed?"

The mass defection "makes no sense at all," said a senior House Democrat. "I never would have [expected] that."

Another senior House Democrat had a single word to sum up the situation: "Amazing."

Zoom in: Several progressives voted against the resolution, including Reps. Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Gwen Moore (D-Wisc.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Mark Takano (D-Calif.).So did Rep. Rob Menendez Jr. (D-N.J.), whose father, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) has resisted calls from his own party to step down over an explosive federal indictment.

Democratic leadership, which whipped against a resolution to censure Tlaib, did not recommend a vote in either direction on the Santos measure.

What they're saying: "I'm a Constitution guy," Raskin, a constitutional law professor who serves as ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, said of his vote in a statement to Axios.

 

So I guess the answer is just sometimes, Democrats like to dress up as circus clowns too so that they can entertain us.

Honk, honk.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump-appointed federal judge Aileen Cannon is all but signalling a significant delay in the Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump himself, and I wouldn't expect this trial to begin -- if it begins at all -- until after the November 2024 election.

 

The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s indictment for allegedly mishandling national security secrets suggested Wednesday that she might push back the planned trial timeline, as courts wrestle with the growing complexity of juggling four separate criminal cases and an ongoing civil trial against the former president.

U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon listened to prosecutors argue at a hearing for keeping the schedule she set earlier this year, which includes a trial in May 2024. Lawyers for the former president insisted they needed more time to prepare.

“I’m having a hard time seeing how this work can be accomplished in this compressed time frame,” Cannon said at one point, focusing in particular on a federal trial scheduled to begin March 4 in Washington in which Trump is accused of conspiring to obstruct the results of the 2020 election.

Wednesday’s debate largely centered on looming deadlines for Trump’s lawyers to file pretrial motions in the Florida case. But pushing back that time frame could have a domino effect of delaying the entire trial schedule.

Prosecutor Jay Bratt argued that whatever the deadlines may be in other cases, those could all change, so it did not make sense to alter the trial date in the Florida case. Cannon sounded skeptical.

“I’m not quite seeing in your position an understanding of these realities,” Cannon told Bratt. The judge said she would rule on the schedule “as soon as possible.”

The hearing highlighted the complexities of a case that centers on highly classified documents, involving a defendant who has multiple competing court dates up and down the East Coast — even as he again runs for president.

Trump lawyer Todd Blanche spent close to an hour telling the judge how “voluminous” the evidence in the classified documents case is, and emphasizing that he and Trump’s other lawyers need more time to review it. He also noted that the D.C. indictment — also brought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith — came after Trump was first charged in the classified-documents case. The Florida trial date was set by Cannon before Trump was indicted in Washington.

“Everything has changed” since Cannon first set the trial date, Blanche told the judge. “There is not a single part of your honor’s schedule that is not adversely affected by the D.C. case.”

Trump is charged in Florida with dozens of counts of mishandling classified information and plotting with two aides to obstruct government efforts to recover hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach home and private club, after his presidency ended. He has pleaded not guilty.

 

Expect the trial to be pushed back until early 2025 at the soonest, which of course was the timeframe that Trump's lawyers asked for initially, that they would need two years to go over the evidence.  It was ridiculously obvious then that the lawyers expected Cannon to deliver on a scenario where a victorious Trump would be able to order the case dismissed after the November 2024 election, and it's even more obvious now just how corrupt Judge Cannon is.

Luckily for America, the other criminal proceedings against Trump are continuing apace.

Immigration Nation, Con't

In a battle 100% certain to be headed to the Supreme Court, Texas lawmakers have voted to allow state and local law enforcement to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants in contravention of, you know, federal law and the Constitution.

 

In a direct challenge to federal power over immigration, the Texas House on Thursday approved the creation of a state-level crime for entering the country from Mexico between ports of entry, allowing local police agencies to arrest and jail unauthorized migrants or order them back to Mexico.

The legislation had been called for by Gov. Greg Abbott in what would be a sharp escalation of his multibillion-dollar border security program, known as Operation Lone Star. The Texas House also approved an additional $1.5 billion for the state to use to construct its own barriers near the international boundary.

The arrest measure now returns to the Senate, which has already approved its own version, and then head to Mr. Abbott’s desk for his signature.

“It is a humane, logical and efficient approach,” Representative David Spiller, a Republican from west of Fort Worth, said in introducing his arrest bill before the vote. “There is nothing unfair about ordering someone back from where they came if they arrived here illegally.”

Emotions ran high during hours of arguments and motions on the House floor that stretched through the night and into Thursday morning, with Democrats objecting to what they said would be a new criminal enforcement regime that could end up inadvertently targeting Hispanic Texans. At one point, tempers flared as Republicans moved to halt amendments to the bill.

“My community is being attacked,” one Latino representative, Armando Walle, a Houston Democrat, told his Republican colleagues. “Y’all don’t understand,” he said. “It hurts us personally.”

For more than two years, Mr. Abbott and Republican lawmakers have been testing the boundaries of the state’s power to enact its own aggressive law enforcement policies in response to the surging number of migrants crossing into the state from Mexico.

But the creation of a criminal offense under state law — empowering Texas officers to arrest migrants, including those seeking asylum — went a step further into a realm of immigration enforcement that is typically reserved to the federal government.

The legislative move is likely to set up a consequential court fight over immigration and, for opponents of President Biden’s immigration policies, create a chance to revisit a 2012 Supreme Court case, originating in Arizona, that was decided 5 to 4 in favor of the federal government’s primary role in setting immigration policy.

 

Needless to say, GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas GOP are picking this fight on purpose. They want the ruling against Arizona's 2021 "Papers, please" law overturned so they can start arresting Latinos left and right in the state.

 

You'd also better believe that Arizona, Florida, Georgia, NC and other big red states will follow suit should the Roberts Court allow them to, with the goal of filling as many detention centers as possible.

This is going to get bad, folks. It may not end up in front of SCOTUS before the 2024 election, but it's still potentially a horrific situation, and the GOP does not care one bit.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

Another day, another AR-15 rifle used in a mass shooting, another butcher's bill of the dead to account for, in what is being called the worst mass shooting massacre in Maine history.

At least 16 people were killed and dozens more injured in multiple shootings here Wednesday night, in what is likely the deadliest shooting in Maine’s history.

Department of Public Safety Commissioner Michael Sauschuck refused to confirm the number of deaths in a news conference late Wednesday, but the Associated Press, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, reported 16 deaths. Earlier in the night, Androscoggin County Sheriff Eric Samson and a Lewiston city councilman had said that as many as 22 people died.

Maine State Police are searching for Robert Card, 40, in connection with the shootings at Sparetime Recreation and Schemengees Bar & Grille. By Thursday morning, more than 100 state and federal law enforcement officials were participating in the manhunt for Card.

Card, who lives in Bowdoin, is a trained firearms instructor who police believe is in the U.S. Army Reserve out of Saco. He recently reported mental health issues, including hearing voices, and made threats to shoot the National Guard base in Saco, according to state police, who said he spent two weeks at a mental health facility this summer.

They warned the public that Card should be considered armed and dangerous. In surveillance photos released by police, the man identified as Card can be seen lifting a rifle as he enters a building.

The car police believed he was driving, a white Subaru Outback, was found near the Lisbon boat dock on Frost Hill Avenue near Route 196. Police were knocking on doors of nearby homes while helicopters remained in the area Wednesday night.

The Lisbon Police Department wrote in an early morning Facebook post that police recommend Lisbon residents “continue to shelter in place with an emphasis on residents between Mill Street in Lisbon Center, along the Rt 196 corridor east to Main street in Lisbon Falls. Businesses located within this area especially will mostly be closed until safety concerns have been addressed.”

Shortly after 6 a.m. Thursday morning, state police said authorities were expanding shelter-in-place and school closing advisories to include the town of Bowdoin as well.

 

If the information about the suspect is correct, he's supposed to be "one of the good guys with a gun", a trained Army Reserve firearms instructor. Instead, police believe he is responsible for a multi-site rampage that happened so quickly and so brutally that officials are still as of this morning trying to fully determine the number of casualties. An entire county is locked down to prevent more.

 

This is one person terrorizing an entire community, with a weapon more than capable of causing mass death and destruction, using a weapon of war for its intended purpose of killing, sold as such, and showing that a person trained to use that weapon can kill many, injure hundreds, threaten thousands.

I hope to God they find this guy and put him in a box for the next thousand years, bt maybe even the state of Maine should be asking about what needs to be done to prevent the next shooting, and whether or not we have the will to do it.

Spoilers: we won't, and we don't.

Just another day here in Gunmerica.

Jack Makes A Deal, Or, Mark Of Betrayal

Fulton County Georgia DA may not have flipped former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows yet in her RICO case, but Jack Smith sure as hell got him to testify before a grand jury in his January 6th federal case.

 

Former President Donald Trump's final chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, has spoken with special counsel Jack Smith's team at least three times this year, including once before a federal grand jury, which came only after Smith granted Meadows immunity to testify under oath, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said Meadows informed Smith's team that he repeatedly told Trump in the weeks after the 2020 presidential election that the allegations of significant voting fraud coming to them were baseless, a striking break from Trump's prolific rhetoric regarding the election.

According to the sources, Meadows also told the federal investigators Trump was being "dishonest" with the public when he first claimed to have won the election only hours after polls closed on Nov. 3, 2020, before final results were in.

"Obviously we didn't win," a source quoted Meadows as telling Smith's team in hindsight.

Trump has called Meadows, one of the former president's closest and highest-ranking aides in the White House, a "special friend" and "a great chief of staff -- as good as it gets."

The descriptions of what Meadows allegedly told investigators shed further light on the evidence Smith's team has amassed as it prosecutes Trump for allegedly trying to unlawfully retain power and "spread lies" about the 2020 election. The descriptions also expose how far Trump loyalists like Meadows have gone to support and defend Trump.

Sources told ABC News that Smith's investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office -- a book that promised to "correct the record" on Trump.

ABC News has identified several assertions in the book that appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.

According to Meadows' book, the election was "stolen" and "rigged" with help from "allies in the liberal media," who ignored "actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze."

But, as described to ABC News, Meadows privately told Smith's investigators that -- to this day -- he has yet to see any evidence of fraud that would have kept now-president Joe Biden from the White House, and he told them he agrees with a government assessment at the time that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure election in U.S. history.

 

Mark Meadows doesn't just know where the bodies are, he helped Trump bury them. He's testified at least once to a grand jury.

But does that mean he's actually going to help Jack Smith bury Trump? Marcy Wheeler throws up a big caution flag.

But I caution against concluding too much about what the testimony means. Most importantly, there’s no hint that Meadows has flipped. Meadows has testified (which a past ABC scoop made clear). But giving immunized testimony is not flipping, and the two ABC stories raise far more questions about the story Meadows has told.

I say that for several reasons. First, ABC doesn’t describe the dates for any of his interviews. I’ll return to that, but it’s important that ABC doesn’t reveal whether Meadows’ testimony to Jack Smith precedes or postdates the Georgia indictment and subsequent failure to get the Georgia indictment removed to Federal courts. An earlier big ABC scoop describes April grand jury testimony, and it’s not clear that this would be a different time frame or grand jury appearance.

I offer cautions, as well, because virtually all of ABC’s reporting says that Meadows was asked not about what Trump did on a given day, but whether Meadows believed what Meadows had said publicly. Here’s an example.

Sources told ABC News that Smith’s investigators were keenly interested in questioning Meadows about election-related conversations he had with Trump during his final months in office, and whether Meadows actually believed some of the claims he included in a book he published after Trump left office — a book that promised to “correct the record” on Trump.

Again, click through to see how much of the rest is of the same sort.

As I noted in my post on that prior big ABC scoop, there are still loads of details — especially about January 6 — missing from the public timeline that Meadows surely knows.

There’s a lot that’s missing here — most notably Meadows’ coordination with Congress and any efforts to coordinate with Mike Flynn and Roger Stone’s efforts more closely tied to the insurrection and abandoned efforts to deploy the National Guard to protect Trump’s mob as it walked to congress. Unless those actions get added to charges quickly, Meadows will be able to argue, in Georgia, that his actions complied with federal law without having to address them. If and when they do get charged in DC, I’m sure Meadows’ attorneys hope, his criminal exposure in Georgia will be resolved.

Importantly, that earlier ABC scoop served to signal co-conspirators how Meadows changed his testimony after prosecutors obtained proof his claims about his ghost-writers — the same ghost-writers whose book remains at the center of ABC’s scoop! — were proven wrong by further evidence.

That story suggested Meadows was only going to be as truthful as evidence presented to him required him to be.

And this story is of the same type. It describes how, as he did in the stolen documents case, Meadows said he didn’t believe what he wrote when it was legally necessary.

Meadows is trying to save his ass, yes. But it doesn't mean he's singing like a canary quite yet. 

Still, four major players in Trump's inner circle have now possibly turned on him in the last week.

 

Sleep well, Donnie. Prison bunks are far less comfortable.

 

Fani Makes A Deal, Or, Ellis If I Know

Another of Trump's Georgia co-conspirators turns state's evidence for Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis's RICO case, this time it's former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis. 

 

Jenna Ellis, a former Trump 2020 election attorney, struck a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors on Monday in their sweeping election racketeering case, making her the fourth of the original co-defendants charged by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to now be cooperating with investigators as they prepare for a trial against the former president and his other associates.

Under terms of the plea deal, which were signed Monday and made public Tuesday, Ellis agreed to a single felony count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings.

In brief remarks to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee, Ellis expressed remorse for her actions in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.

"What I did not do, but should have done, your honor, was make sure that the facts the other lawyers alleged to be true were in fact true," she said. "...I should have done my due diligence."

Ellis had been facing two felony counts over at least two memos to Trump and his lawyers advising that then-Vice President Mike Pence should disregard electoral votes from Georgia and other “contested” states during the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, certification ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

She's the fourth person charged by Willis to switch course after initially pleading not guilty. Pro-Trump lawyers Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell reached separate plea agreements late last week with Willis to cooperate with her investigation in exchange for their admissions of guilt and less stringent sentences. Those deals nixed a trial that was just getting started last Friday with jury selection in Fulton County.

 

Like The Big Chese Bro and The Kraken Lady, Ellis is getting probation and a fine in return for testifying against the other co-conspirators at a later date. DA Willis is putting on a master class here in busting organized crime and racketeering by flipping the smaller fish to catch the white whale. Or, you know, the orange whale in this case.

Trump Cards, Con't

As Marcy Wheeler explains, Trump's defense against Judge Tanya Chutkan's gag order in his January 6th case argues that Trump is not only entitled to unrestricted "free speech" by rallying his legion of MAGA chuds to rage against Chutkin herself, but that the rights of his followers to echo and spread that rage are being violated as well.

A substantial portion of the 33-page motion speaks for the First Amendment rights of his mob to hear, respond to, and amplify Trump’s speech. To defend this principle, Trump cites, among other things, the Missouri v. Biden that SCOTUS just agreed to review over the objections of Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch.

Under the First Amendment, violating the rights of a speaker inflicts an equal and reciprocal constitutional injury on the listener. “Freedom of speech presupposes a willing speaker. But where a speaker exists, . . . the protection afforded is to the communication, to its source and to its recipients both.” Virginia State Bd. of Pharmacy v. Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Inc., 425 U.S. 748, 756 (1976) (emphasis added) (collecting many cases); see also, e.g., Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. F.C.C., 395 U.S. 367, 390 (1969) (“It is the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount.”); Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. 98, 104 (2017) (recognizing the right to “speak and listen, and then … speak and listen once more,” as a “fundamental principle of the First Amendment”); Missouri v. Biden, — F.4th –, No. 23- 30445, 2023 WL 6425697, at *11 (5th Cir. Oct. 3, 2023) (holding that the “right to listen is ‘reciprocal’ to the … right to speak” and “constitutes an independent basis” for relief). Thus, injuring President Trump’s ability to speak injures the First Amendment rights of over 100 million Americans who listen to him, respond to him, and amplify his message.

The claim to have 100 million listeners is a bit like calling his NY penthouse 33,000 square feet, insofar as it relies on overlapping numbers, including the 87 million followers he has but does not tweet to on Xitter.

Trump necessarily dedicates a very long footnote to explaining how he has standing to appeal this gag on behalf of his mob.

3 President Trump unquestionably has third-party standing to defend the rights of his audiences in this context. The Supreme Court is “quite forgiving” of third-party standing requirements “[w]ithin the context of the First Amendment.” Kowalski v. Tesmer, 543 U.S. 125, 130 (2004). The First Amendment’s overbreadth doctrine, for example, relieves the third-party plaintiff of the burden to show the usual “close relationship” and “hindrance” required by the third-party standing doctrine, id.; instead, Article III injury is all that is required. See id.; United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 140 S. Ct. 1575, 1586 (2020) (Thomas, J., concurring) (“Litigants raising overbreadth challenges rarely satisfy either requirement [‘close relationship’ and ‘hindrance’], but the Court nevertheless allows third-party standing.”) (citing Dombroski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 487 (1965)); N.J. Bankers Ass’n v. Att’y Gen., 49 F.4th 849, 860 (3d Cir. 2022) (noting that “the requirement that an impediment exist to the third party asserting his . . . own rights” does not apply when the challenged government action “substantially abridges the First Amendment rights of other parties not before the court”). Further, as the Supreme Court held in Bantam Books Inc. v. Sullivan, it is particularly important to allow third-party standing to vindicate First Amendment interests because “freedoms of expression … are vulnerable to gravely damaging yet barely visible encroachments” and must be protected by “the most rigorous procedural safeguards.” 372 U.S. 58, 66 (1963); see also id. at 64 n.6 (upholding the third-party standing of book publishers to assert the rights of distributors because “[t]he distributor … is not likely to sustain sufficient economic injury to induce him to seek judicial vindication of his rights,” whereas the seller has a “greater . . . stake” in vindicating those rights). In addition, the doctrine of third-party standing applies “when enforcement of the challenged restriction against the litigant would result indirectly in the violation of third parties’ rights.” Kowalski, 543 U.S. at 130. Here, the interference and restriction of President Trump’s First Amendment rights “would result indirectly in the violation of third parties’ rights,” id.—i.e., the rights of his audiences to receive, respond to, and amplify his speech.

I think this footnote is suspect, legally and practically. I mean, the notion that Stephen Miller’s NGO for fascism couldn’t vindicate these rights is nonsense. But it is nevertheless telling.

Trump makes that argument even while complaining that Judge Chutkan had to rely on the potential actions of others — that very same mob riled up by the amplified false victimization of Trump — to justify the gag itself.

Unable to justify the Gag Order based on President Trump’s actions, the prosecution pivots to third parties, alleging that unnamed others, outside of President Trump’s control, acted improperly before this case began. Such concerns cannot justify the Gag Order. The Supreme Court has repeatedly explained that citizens of this country cannot be censored based on a fear of what others might do. Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447 (1969) (“[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy . . . except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”).

[snip]

In entering the Gag Order, the Court relied heavily on the anticipated reactions of unidentified, independent third parties to President Trump’s speech. The Court found that “when Defendant has publicly attacked individuals, including on matters related to this case, those individuals are consequently threatened and harassed.” Id. at 2. But the Court cited no evidence that President Trump’s statements—as distinct from the statements of millions of others—caused such alleged threats or harassment, let alone that the statements were directed to inciting imminent lawless action.

Remember, Trump has repeatedly denied that the indictment accuses him of mobilizing the mob against Congress. Even after DOJ disabused Trump of that fantasy, he is playing coy about the fact that the crime he is alleged to have committed significantly involves riling up a mob to use as a weapon.

Indeed, Trump admits this is the plan to get elected: to rile up the mob again, this time by using this prosecution as a trigger.

The prosecution filed the indictment in this matter on August 1, 2023. Doc. 1. As this case is pending, President Trump continues to campaign for President, and one of his core messages is that the prosecutions against him are part of an unconstitutional strategy to attack and silence the Biden Administration’s chief political rival. To advance this message, President Trump has made many public statements criticizing individuals he believes are wrongly prosecuting him, including President Biden, Attorney General Garland, and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith and his team. This viewpoint—that the prosecution is politically motivated—is one shared by countless Americans.

[snip]

President Trump’s speech in support of his re-election campaign—which is inextricably intertwined with this prosecution and his defense—lies “at the core of our electoral process of the First Amendment freedoms—an area . . . where protection of robust discussion is at its zenith.” Meyer v. Grant, 486 U.S. 414, 425 (1988) (citations and quotations omitted); see also Buckley v. Am. Const. Law Found., Inc., 525 U.S. 182, 186–87 (1999); McIntyre v. Ohio Elec. Comm’n, 514 U.S. 334, 347 (1995) (“[C]ore political speech” encompasses any “advocacy of a politically controversial viewpoint.” “No form of speech is entitled to greater constitutional protection than” core political speech.).

Some of this is just cynicism: by claiming all this is political speech, Trump does base his appeal on the most expansive First Amendment precedent. The legal arguments here, some of them, anyway, are not frivolous.

But he’s not wrong about his campaign strategy. The key to Trump’s political success since he was sworn in was to polarize the electorate based off false claims that any investigation of Trump’s crimes is an attack on him and his mob.

Wheeler is right, of course. The whole "You can't prosecute me because you're hurting the people who voted for me" nonsense is literally Trump claiming he's immune from legal repercussions because he has a giant mob at his beckon call and that the "injury" done to his supporters by even investigating Trump renders him invincible.

If that's somehow the accepted legal justification, then no politician in the country can be touched because it unfairly hurts their supporters, voters, and followers, and Trump's legal team goes on to say that this is the highest form of democracy.

It's mob rule over all other things, and whoever has the biggest mob wins. 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

At this point it really is a race to see which judge presiding over a Trump case will put him in the slammer for gag order violations first, and the judge in Trump's civil case is no longer playing around. Trump's going to have to come up with five grand.

Former President Donald Trump was fined $5,000 on Friday after his disparaging social media post about a key court staffer in his New York civil fraud trial lingered on his campaign website for weeks after the judge ordered it deleted.

Judge Arthur Engoron avoided holding Trump in contempt for now, but reserved the right to do so — and possibly even put the 2024 Republican front-runner in jail — if he again violates a limited gag order barring case participants from personal attacks on court staff.

Engoron said in a written ruling that he is “way beyond the ‘warning’ stage,” but that he was only fining Trump a nominal amount because this was a “first time violation” and Trump’s lawyers said the website’s retention of the post had been inadvertent.

“Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him,” Engoron wrote in a two-page order.

 

Again, Trump is daring a judge, any judge, to sanction him so he can scream that his trial is unfair, and influence his followers to take action, possibly precipitous and dangerous action. This is what he wants. He's going to fly through the air like a loutish orange Icarus until his wings melt, and when he crashes, he's going to try to blot out the sun.

 

But that has to be balanced against the real potential for violence. A Maryland judge was shot to death this week in his own driveway after awarding custody of the suspected gunman's children to the suspect's wife. We shoot judges in America, you see. Who would come gunning for Judge Engoron, or Judge Chutkin in Trump's January 6th case, if either one of them leveled real sanctions against Trump?

 

How many more warnings and chances will Trump end up getting in order to try to stave off a lethal response? 

Can America survive that? Can America survive putting Trump in jail at all?

Last Call For Fani Makes A Deal, Or, One Grilled Chese Please

Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis keeps on winning, and this time she's gotten a felony plea along with state's evidence.

Kenneth Chesebro, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia, a deal in which he will avoid jail time and agreed to provide evidence that implicates other co-defendants, including Trump himself.

Chesebro was the second former Trump lawyer to accept a plea deal in the sprawling conspiracy case in as many days. The plea came in just hours after jury selection began, ahead of an expected trial next month.

Chesebro pleaded guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to file false documents and accepted a sentence of three to five years of probation, a $1,000 fine, $5,000 in restitution to the state of Georgia, an apology letter, 100 hours of community service and a promise to testify truthfully against any other co-defendants in the case, should they go to trial.

In his plea deal, Chesebro implicated several of those co-defendants as being part of the conspiracy to file false documents: Trump, four other lawyers including Rudy Giuliani, and one campaign operative. The charge relates to Chesebro’s role organizing slates of pro-Trump electors to meet in seven states where Biden had won.

Chesebro’s guilty plea follows that of Sidney Powell on Thursday and makes him the third co-defendant to admit guilt in the criminal racketeering case, which alleges Trump and 18 allies broke Georgia law when they sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. In addition to Powell, bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty earlier this month in the conspiracy — with all agreeing to testify against others in the case.

The plea is the latest legal victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D), whose office is prosecuting the Georgia case. In addition to flipping one of the key members of the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors now avoid a trial in which they would have had to showcase much of their evidence against Trump and others, which might have offered lawyers for other defendants a legal advantage heading into their trials.

The potential for incriminating testimony from three of Trump’s co-defendants could have a far-reaching impact on the former president’s legal fortunes, as well as some of the other high-profile defendants, notably Giuliani, who is alleged to have known about Powell’s and Chesebro’s efforts to help overturn Trump’s loss. 

 

And the right-wing keeps yelling that these pleas are meaningless and that Willis doesn't have any case because she hasn't gotten anyone to cop to a RICO felony yet.

Don't worry, kids. That's coming. The Finding Out Phase is definitely here for Trump and fiends.

Fani Makes A Deal, Or, Sidney's Kraken Up

Looks like Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis played Let's Make A Deal again, and I told you she would. Her contestant: Former Trump lawyer and oceanic cryptid enthusiast Sidney Powell, who just flipped on Trump in Fani Willis's Georgia election interference case.

 

Sidney Powell, a GOP lawyer who briefly represented Donald Trump, has flipped on the former president, striking a plea deal with Georgia prosecutors ahead of her trial on a slew of criminal charges.

According to court filings, Powell pleaded guilty to six counts of conspiracy to interfere with election duties.

She was one of over a dozen co-defendants — including Trump himself — in the Fulton County DA's office's RICO case, which accused Trump and his allies of violating the state's racketeering statute while working to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election results.

As part of the plea agreement, Powell — who pushed several conspiracy theories about the 2020 election results and vowed to release the "Kraken," purported evidence of widespread election fraud that never materialized — will have to testify at future trials and write a letter apologizing to Georgia citizens.

Powell's plea deal was announced at a court hearing on Thursday. As part of the agreement, she will also have to pay $2,700 in restitution to replace election equipment, as well as a $6,000 fine. She faces a maximum sentence of six years probation.

Powell was set to go to trial on Monday, along with co-defendant and former Trump campaign lawyer Kenneth Chesebro.

 

I don't use this language often, but Trump is fucked. 

 

We'll see if Kenny Cheseboro flips before his trial on Monday, but does Willis really need him at this point? The only bigger fish on this seafood buffet are Rudy, Mark Meadows, and the king marlin himself, Trump. At this point, unless Meadows or Rudy flips, the window for a deal has closed.

Expect another tirade as Trump gets closer and closer to prison.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

On Monday, Judge Tanya Chutkan made it very clear about what will happen if Trump continues to attack her, prosecutors, witnesses, and other court officers in Jack Smith's January 6th case against him, as the judge issued a partial gag order against Trump's social media tirades.

A federal judge on Monday issued a gag order on former President Donald Trump, limiting what he can say about special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution into his alleged attempt to subvert in the 2020 presidential election.

The order restricts Trump’s ability to publicly target court personnel, potential witnesses, or the special counsel and his staff. The order did not impose restrictions on disparaging comments about Washington, DC, – where the jury will take place – or certain comments about the Justice Department at large, both of which the government requested.

“This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses,” Judge Tanya Chutkan said. “This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice.”

“His presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify public servants who are simply doing their jobs,” the judge added.

Chutkan noted that any violation of her orders could result in sanctions.

Following the two federal indictments against the former president, Trump has lashed out against prosecutors, potential witnesses and the judge overseeing the election subversion case in Washington. Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s office say these comments are enough to warrant a narrow restriction on Trump’s speech around the case.

Chutkan, often the target of Trump’s attacks, warned the former president that comments he or his attorneys make could threaten the case.

“Mr. Trump is a criminal defendant. He is facing four felony charges. He is under the supervision of the criminal justice system and he must follow his conditions of release,” Chutkan said Monday during the hearing.

“He does not have the right to say and do exactly what he pleases. Do you agree with that?” she asked Trump attorney John Lauro, who responded: “100%.”

 

First, Judge Chutkan is making it clear sanctions -- real ones -- are on the table.

 

Second, she's making it clear that those sanctions could affect the conditions of Trump's release on bail.

 

Trump's not going to listen, of course. In fact, he immediately attacked Judge Chutkan on social media Monday afternoon.

 

Just hours after a federal judge handed down a gag order which prohibits him from publicly targeting witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff, former President Donald Trump went on a tirade against the judge, likely violating the order almost immediately.

He made the comments during a campaign speech in Clive, Iowa, calling the order “totally unconstitutional” while claiming that Judge Tanya Chutkan’s “whole life is not liking me.”

Trump later said: “I am willing to go to jail if that’s what it takes for our country to win and become a democracy again.” 

 

So what will happen when he goes nuts again and again on social media again this week? Will Judge Chutkan martyr Trump like he wants?

 

We're going to find out.