Ridin' With BidenGPT

The White House has issued a long-anticipated executive order involving the regulation of artificial intelligence systems, which I know absolutely sounds like part of the opening exposition in the first five minutes of a Terminator franchise movie, but this is a dose of necessary reality here in 2023.

 

President Joe Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence Monday, setting the stage for some industry regulations and funding for the U.S. government to further invest in the technology.

The order is broad, and its focuses range from civil rights and industry regulations to a government hiring spree.

In a media call previewing the order Sunday, a senior White House official, who asked to not be named as part of the terms of the call, said AI has so many facets that effective regulations have to cast a wide net.

“AI policy is like running into a decathlon, and there’s 10 different events here,” the official said.

“And we don’t have the luxury of just picking ‘we’re just going to do safety’ or ‘we’re just going to do equity’ or ‘we’re just going to do privacy.’ You have to do all of these things.”

The official also called for “significant bipartisan legislation” to further advance the country’s interests with AI. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., held a private forum in September with industry leaders but has yet to introduce significant AI legislation.

Some of the order builds on a previous nonbinding agreement that seven of the top U.S. tech companies developing AI agreed to in July, like hiring outside experts to probe their systems for weaknesses and sharing their critical findings.

The order leverages the Defense Production Act to legally require those companies to share safety test results with the federal government.

It also tasks the Commerce Department with creating guidance about “watermarking” AI content to make it clear that deepfaked videos or ChatGPT-generated essays were not created by humans.

The order adds funding for new AI research and a federal AI hiring surge. The White House has launched a corresponding website to connect job seekers with AI government jobs: AI.gov.

Fei-Fei Li, a co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview that government funding is crucial for AI to be able to tackle major human problems.

“The public sector holds a unique opportunity in terms of data and interdisciplinary talent to cure cancer, cure rare diseases, to map out biodiversity at a global scale, to understand and predict wildfires, to find climate solutions, to supercharge our teachers,” Li said. “There’s so much the public sector can do, but all of this is right now starved because we are severely lacking in resources.”

 

And while this is a start, these remain guidelines without real enforcement consequences. Actual laws have to be written by Congress, and they keep dragging their feet as AI keeps getting further and further ahead. Ethical, social, and environmental concerns are great to have, but all this lacks any real hard and fast penalties for companies that violate them.

As it is, the major players in AI like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, all have a long history of violating federal antitrust, commerce and labor regulations. Asking them to play nicely here is not going to hold up for much longer when trillions are at stake in the years ahead for whichever company masters the process of successfully stealing a planet's worth of intellectual property to feed their Frankenstein's Monster first.

We're going to need something much, much stronger, if not an international treaty with watchdog organizations and monitoring the way we have for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons currently.

 

On top of that, we have to make it stick. We're not going to of course, not until it's well far past being too late. 

We may already be past that point now, to be frank.

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.

 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Former Trump aide Peter Navarro is willing to go to jail in order to protect Donald Trump, and today he was convicted on contempt of Congress charges after less than four hours of jury deliberation.

 

Former Donald Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has been convicted of contempt of Congress for not complying to a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

Navarro is the second ex-aide to the former president to be prosecuted for his lack of cooperation with the committee. Steve Bannon was convicted last year on two contempt counts. Bannon’s case is currently on appeal.

Navarro pledged to appeal based on executive privilege issues.

“We knew going in what the verdict was going to be. That is why this is going to the appeals court,” he told reporters outside the courthouse. “And we feel – look, I said from the beginning this is going to the Supreme Court. I said from the beginning I’m willing to go to prison to settle this issue, I’m willing to do that.”

Asked by CNN if he’s spoken with the former president or reached out for help on legal bills, Navarro called Trump “a rock,” but did not elaborate on any communications.

“President Trump has been a rock in terms of assistance. We talk when we need to talk,” Navarro said. “He will win the presidential race in 2024, in November. You know why? Because the people are tired of Joe Biden weaponizing courts like this and the Department of Justice.”

After the verdict was read, Navarro’s lawyers sought a mistrial, raising concerns about any influence alleged protestors may have had when jurors took a break outdoors Thursday afternoon. US District Judge Amit Mehta did not immediately rule on the motion.

he judge scheduled Navarro’s sentencing for January 12, 2024.

Tim Mulvey, former spokesperson for House January 6 committee, celebrated the verdict.

“His defiance of the committee was brazen. Like the other witnesses who attempted to stonewall the committee, he thought he was above the law. He isn’t. That’s a good thing for the rule of law. I imagine that those under indictment right now are getting a good reminder of that right now,” Mulvey told CNN in a statement.

 

Navarro has always rolled the dice on tying this up in court until SCOTUS can either dismiss the charges or Trump in a second term can pardon him.

 

Neither one is a particularly long shot, and he won't spend a day in prison or pay a dollar in fines as a result, most likely. SCOTUS will find that executive branch advisers like Navarro are protected by executive privilege, and that will be that.

Of course, then he can be tried on other criminal charges stemming from January 6th, so.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Biden is designating nearly a million acres in Arizona around the Grand Canyon as a National Monument, protecting the area from mining while preserving hunting, fishing, and grazing rights for Native American use.

 

The designation would protect the area from potential uranium mining. It also protects existing grazing permits and leases, existing mining claims and will support area hunting and fishing, officials said. It encompasses approximately 917,000 acres of public land, officials said.

The president’s trip to battleground Arizona is part of a three-stop Western swing to highlight his economic agenda and legislative accomplishments this week ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping climate, tax, and health care law. The monument’s designation makes good on longtime calls from tribal leaders and environmental activists, as well as Arizona lawmakers, including Democratic Rep. Raùl Grijalva and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who have advocated for the lands surrounding the Grand Canyon to be protected.

Biden will designate Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, a move aimed at conserving “nearly 1 million acres of greater Grand Canyon landscape,” Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory told reporters.

“This land is sacred to tribal nations and indigenous peoples. Its sweeping plateaus and deep canyons share many of the features of the Grand Canyon. The land includes some of the most biodiverse habitats in the region, providing refuge for wildlife like bighorn sheep, bison, bald eagles and songbirds. And the area’s meandering creeks and streams flow into the mighty Colorado River, a critical water supply to millions of people across the Southwest,” Mallory said.

“Many of us have worked for decades to safeguard our Grand Canyon homelands from desecration at the hands of extractive, harmful operations like uranium mining, and today, with the designation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, we see these lands permanently protected at last,” Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition coordinator Carletta Tilousi said in a statement.

The Biden administration has been gathering public input on the designation for months, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland – the first Native American Cabinet secretary – visited the area in May and met with tribal leaders. Haaland and her staff hiked 10 miles into the canyon to visit Supai Village, a small village that is the capital of the Havasupai Indian Reservation.

Haaland described the visit as “one of the most meaningful trips of my life,” as she detailed the importance of the lands that make up Tuesday’s designation.

The Havasupai people’s ancestors, Haaland said, “lived, farmed, and prayed among the canyons and plateaus far beyond the borders of the reservation they occupied today.” She added that the Havasupai people “were driven out of their homelands” after the establishment of the Grand Canyon National Park in 1919.

“Their story is one shared by many tribes in the southwest who trace their origins to the Grand Canyon, and the plateaus and tributaries that surround it and who have persevered by continuing their longstanding practices on sacred homelands just outside the boundaries of the park,” she said.

The designation will help ensure that the lands can be used by indigenous peoples for religious ceremonies, as well as for hunting and gathering. But it also sends an important signal to native people, Haaland said.

Native American history, she said, “is American history. And that’s what tomorrow is all about: This president and this administration see Indian country. I’m speaking to you as the first Native American Cabinet secretary as a testament to that. Feeling seen means being appreciated for who we are: The original stewards of our shared lands and waters.”

Haaland continued, “These special places are not a pass-through on the way to the Grand Canyon. They are sacred and significant unto their own right. They should not be open to new mining claims and developed beyond recognition. We are in a new era, one in which we honor tribally led conservation, advanced co-stewardship and care about the well-being of native people.”

Native American history is American history, good and bad. We absolutely need to remember that, and the lessons gained from it. Sadly, judging from the rate that we're wrecking the environment, we haven't learned much at all.

But we have to start somewhere, and this is a good act. $44 million will be invested in our national parks and monuments thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.  Would that it was ten or even a hundred times as much, but it's better than the cuts Republicans (and some Democrats, looking at you, Manchin) wanted in order to turn our national lands into strip mines.

Record heat will only get worse in states like Arizona, and all we can do now is try to control the damage. Of course, that could start with breaking up energy giants, but that's not going to happen.

Last Call For The Loan Arranger Rides Again

The SCOTUS argument as to why President Biden's COVID-era student loan forgiveness program had to die was because the executive didn't have the authority from Congress to run the program under emergency rules. The Biden administration has responded with "We do have explicit authority to modify student loans under the Education Department and we're going to use it."

The SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education, plan was finalized after the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness initiative in June. It marks a significant change to the federal student loan system that could lower monthly loan payments for some borrowers and reduce the amount they pay back over the lifetime of their loans.

“Part of the president’s overall commitment is to improve the student loan system and reduce the burden of student loan debt on American families,” a senior administration official said, previewing the beta website first to CNN. “The SAVE plan is a big part of that. It is important in this moment as borrowers are getting ready to return to repayment.”

Federal student loan borrowers can access the beta website at https://studentaid.gov/idr/. The enrollment process is estimated to take 10 minutes, and many sections can be automatically populated with information the government has on hand, including tax returns from the IRS, administration officials said.

“We will be able to show borrowers their exact monthly payment amount and give them the ability to choose the most affordable repayment plan for them,” one official said.

Borrowers will only need to apply one time, not yearly as past systems require, which officials said would make this plan “much easier to use.” Users will receive a confirmation email once the application is submitted, and the approval process, which can be tracked online, is expected to take a few weeks.

Those already enrolled in the federal government’s REPAYE, or Revised Pay As You Earn, income-driven repayment plan will be automatically switched to the new plan.

The full website launch will occur in August, and applications submitted during the beta period will not need to be resubmitted. The beta period will allow the Department of Education to monitor site performance in real time to identify any issues, and the site may be paused to make any necessary updates, officials said.

The SAVE plan, which applies to current and future federal student loan borrowers, will determine payments based on income and family size, and some monthly payments will be as small as $0. The income threshold to qualify for $0 payments has been increased from 150% to 225% of federal poverty guidelines, which translates to an annual income of $32,805 for a single borrower or $67,500 for a family of four. The Education Department estimates this means more than 1 million additional borrowers will qualify for $0 payments under the plan.

Some borrowers could have their payments cut in half when the program is in full effect next year and see their remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments, a significant change from previous plans.

With the new plan, unpaid interest will not accrue if a borrower makes their full monthly payments.

But the new plan does come at a cost to the federal government. Estimates of the program’s expense have varied depending on how many borrowers sign up for the new plan, but they range from $138 billion to $361 billion over 10 years. By comparison, Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was expected to cost about $400 billion.

The Education Department has created similar income-driven repayment plans in the past and has not faced a successful legal challenge, officials noted.

The beta site launch comes as borrowers will need to begin making federal student loan payments again in October after a pause of more than three years because of the pandemic.

The question now becomes how quickly Republicans will sue to block the program and send it to the Supreme Court.  They will find their federal judge to block the program, and we'll see how fast they move to get it to SCOTUS to end it. I'm betting they will get it blocked in the next few months, but delay any further legal action until after summer 2024. After the election, if Trump wins, he'll just end the program in 2025 or better yet, just have SCOTUS do it so he can say "Oh well I tried" and blame SCOTUS justices who won't face a lick of accountability. If Biden gets a second term, same thing happens.

The trillion-dollar-plus student loan industry that owns SCOTUS conservatives won't let this stand. This will be blocked before the October deadline and the hundreds of billions in student loan repayments will crash the economy by early next year.

Everyone will blame Biden, and then Trump wins easily.

That'll be the plan. Whether it works, well, you tell me.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith on Thursday, but it just wasn't for January 6th charges, as that grand jury is still proceeding.

 

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday brought additional charges against former President Donald Trump in the case alleging mishandling of classified documents from his time in the White House.

Prosecutors allege in the updated indictment that two Trump employees – Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira – attempted to delete security camera footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the footage.

De Oliveira told the director of IT at the resort, “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the indictment.

Trump, who is already facing 37 criminal charges, was charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Trump was charged with willfully retaining a top-secret document about possible Iran attack plans, which he discussed with biographers during a taped meeting at Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the document was a “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country” and that Trump “showed” it to the biographers during the meeting.

New charges were also filed against Trump’s aide Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker De Oliveira was also added to the case. De Oliveira, 56, was charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes with classified documents.

Trump and Nauta were previously charged last month and have pleaded not guilty.

De Oliveira was the maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May.

CNN has previously reported that surveillance footage turned over to the Justice Department showed Nauta and De Oliveira, moving document boxes around the resort, including into a storage room just before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran searched it for classified documents.

 

So we've reached the cover-up portion of the proceedings, and I wouldn't be surprised if more charges were brought in the weeks ahead against Trump and his Mar-a-Lago staff that assisted in efforts to hide the documents from investigators.

And while the hammer didn't drop on January 6th charges on Thursday, I would surmise that those charges are coming in the weeks ahead too, along with whatever Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis has coming later this summer.

The additional charge involving a document discussed at Trump's Bedminster property now brings that location into play, too.

Expect more legal trouble for Trump, is what I'm saying. As Marcy Wheeler documents, this is big:

While all the journalists were in Prettyman Courthouse in DC, Jack Smith superseded the Florida stolen documents indictment to add Trump employee Carlos De Oliveira — the property manager — to the indictment.

He’s the guy who helped Walt Nauta move boxes around, including loading them to go to Bedminster. Nauta also allegedly asked him to help destroy surveillance footage.

The superseding indictment adds another stolen document count — the Iran document he showed others, which is classified Top Secret — and another obstruction count for attempting to destroy the video footage.

This passage describes how Nauta flew to Florida to attempt to destroy security footage.

This is a key paragraph of the superseding indictment. It shows how Trump uses legal representation to secure loyalty. It’s a fact pattern that crosses both of Trump’s crimes, and may well be in the expected January 6 indictment. It may help to break down the omerta currently protecting Trump.

Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP’s office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.

Several uncharged Trump employees have been added to the indictment.

• Trump Employee 3, who simply passed on the information that Trump wanted to speak to Nauta on the day Trump Organization received a subpoena
• Trump Employee 4, who is the Director of IT who had control of the surveillance footage; according to some reports, he had received a target letter
• Trump Employee 5, who is a valet, but from whom DOJ seems to have firsthand testimony

The passage above seems to rely on testimony from Trump Employee 5 and the final exploitation of Walt Nauta’s phone.

 

Trump's discount organized crime family operation in Florida is about to be taken apart. And in order to avoid doing decades of time for their boss, they're going to talk. Trump knows he has to now do everything he can to keep them loyal and that means buying them legal representation. "Don't worry," he says. "I'll take care of you."

And he will. He'll make sure they are sacrificed for him. It's worked for him for decades.

Will it still work now?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Lawfare's Ben Wittes makes a convincing argument that Trump will be indicted by Special Counsel Jack Smith's grand jury on January 6th charges as soon as Friday and the indictment unsealed next week. Once again the reasoning is fueled by the fact Trump can't keep his damn mouth shut as he went on a Truth Social tirade on Tuesday over Smith naming Trump as a target of his January 6th investigation.

There are very few facts in Trump’s statement, but it does seem to say clearly enough that on Sunday evening, Trump received a target letter from Special Counsel Jack Smith in the Jan. 6 investigation. Trump also claims that the letter gave him “a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury.”

Trump is not a reliable narrator on factual matters, but he has twice before announced that he expected to be indicted and been right both times. There seems to me little reason to suspect that he would make up his receipt of a target letter—especially because we know from news reporting that the Jan. 6 grand jury has been active and was clearly approaching the decision-making phase of its work. Indeed, only on Friday, I noted that the absence of a target letter story in the press was the only reason to think an indictment wasn’t yet imminent at that time: “It sure looks like we’re basically at decision time. Except for one thing—and I think the one thing is overwhelmingly likely to happen before an indictment does. We have not seen a story about a target letter, a meeting with Trump’s lawyers, a negotiated surrender, or an indictment filed under seal.”

Well, thanks to Trump, that one thing is now in place. A target letter almost always precedes an indictment by only a short time. So it’s reasonable to infer that if Trump has received one, the indictment will follow soon.

Trump offers another useful factual claim, which is his vague reference to a time frame. It’s not clear precisely what he means by “giving me a very short 4 days to report to the Grand Jury,” but I suspect it means that prosecutors have invited him to testify before the grand jury and given him a deadline of Thursday to do so. That would likely mean an indictment will immediately follow the lapse of that deadline, assuming Trump does not actually show up. The indictment will likely be filed under seal so as to allow an orderly process for Trump to show up for surrender and arraignment—as happened with the Mar-a-Lago indictment.

A few additional inferences are possible. This indictment will take place in Washington, D.C. We know this not merely because Trump claims it in the last paragraph of his statement. We know it also because the grand jury has been meeting for months at the courthouse here in Washington, and unlike with the Mar-a-Lago case, that has continued up until the present; the locus of activity has not shifted elsewhere as it did in the Mar-a-Lago case, which was taken up late in the game by a grand jury in Florida.

One thing Trump gives no sign of in his statement is what he will be charged with. The possibilities here are broad. There has been a lot of talk in the press about possible wire fraud charges in connection with some of the post-election fundraising. There is also the possibility of charges in connection with the pressure exerted on Vice President Pence and other elected officials or Trump’s efforts to procure fake electors. The subject matter of the indictment also has implications for the possibility of possible co-defendants—if any—a subject on which Trump is also silent. We do know, however, because of the subject matter of the grand jury investigation and the limitations of Smith’s jurisdictional mandate that the charges will concern Jan. 6 in some meaningful sense.

There is no point speculating about these matters at this stage, although that surely won’t stop cable news pundits from doing so incessantly until the text of any indictment becomes public. The most one can responsibly say is that a third indictment appears to be forthcoming, and that it’s reasonable to expect the grand jury to act as early as the end of this week.

 

Which explains in part why Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is waiting until next month to unveil her state charges against Trump, letting Jack Smith go first with those "possibly broad" charges. Rolling Stone's Jana Winter:

THE SPECIAL COUNSEL’S letter to Donald Trump related to Jan. 6 listed the federal statutes under which Trump is expected to be charged, including conspiracy, obstruction, and civil rights violations, according to a source with knowledge of the contents of the target letter.

Special counsel Jack Smith sent the letter to Trump on Sunday, informing him he was a target of the Justice Department. Trump on Tuesday announced he’d been sent the letter via a post on the social media platform Truth Social.

The letter mentions three federal statutes: Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud the United States; deprivation of rights under color of law; and tampering with a witness, victim, or an informant. It does not offer further details, nor does it detail how the special counsel believes Trump may have violated the statutes, the source tells Rolling Stone.

The letter does not mention statutes on sedition or insurrection, according to the source. Trump is the only person named in the letter, the source says.

 

Sedition and insurrection are going to be hard to prove in court. Defrauding the United States with a false slate of electors and witness tampering, well, Trump has kinda already admitted to that publicly and on several occasions, hasn't he?

Stay tuned. This weekend could be a hell of a ride.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump is at this point exercising in villain monologuing, telling us exactly what his evil plans are if he is elected to anyone who will listen.

 

Donald J. Trump and his allies are planning a sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government if voters return him to the White House in 2025, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands.

Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.

He wants to revive the practice of “impounding” funds, refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs a president doesn’t like — a tactic that lawmakers banned under President Richard Nixon.

He intends to strip employment protections from tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to replace them if they are deemed obstacles to his agenda. And he plans to scour the intelligence agencies, the State Department and the defense bureaucracies to remove officials he has vilified as “the sick political class that hates our country.”

“The president’s plan should be to fundamentally reorient the federal government in a way that hasn’t been done since F.D.R.’s New Deal,” said John McEntee, a former White House personnel chief who began Mr. Trump’s systematic attempt to sweep out officials deemed to be disloyal in 2020 and who is now involved in mapping out the new approach.

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Mr. Trump and his advisers are making no secret of their intentions — proclaiming them in rallies and on his campaign website, describing them in white papers and openly discussing them.

“What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them,” said Russell T. Vought, who ran the Office of Management and Budget in the Trump White House and now runs a policy organization, the Center for Renewing America.

The strategy in talking openly about such “paradigm-shifting ideas” before the election, Mr. Vought said, is to “plant a flag” — both to shift the debate and to later be able to claim a mandate. He said he was delighted to see few of Mr. Trump’s Republican primary rivals defend the norm of Justice Department independence after the former president openly attacked it.

Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said in a statement that the former president has “laid out a bold and transparent agenda for his second term, something no other candidate has done.” He added, “Voters will know exactly how President Trump will supercharge the economy, bring down inflation, secure the border, protect communities and eradicate the deep state that works against Americans once and for all.”

 

Hey folks?

 

If you're not a MAGA Republican cultist?

 

You're the "deep state" that Trump will eradicate.  

To recap, imagine the FCC yanking the licenses for any network that displeases Trump. Imagine the FTC and SEC fining "woke" businesses billions. Imagine the FBI, IRS, Border Patrol and US Marshals used against Democratic lawmakers and the people who voted for them. Imagine the EEOC or HUD saying there are too many Black employees or homeowners in a certain area that needs to be reduced in order to stop racism against white folks. Hell, imagine the FAA ending all commercial flights to California airports. If the guy can figure out how to use the EPA to shut off water to blue cities, he'll do that, too.

 

Keep laughing, because Trump and his merry band of fascist assholes are dreaming of this nonsense right now, and betting on a SCOTUS that will allow them to do whatever they want. You thought Dick Cheney's plenary executive era was bad? Wait until Trump gets back in power.

 

While Republicans continue to bleat and fart about Biden "politicizing the Justice Department" not only is Trump planning to order that same DoJ to go after Biden, Obama, Clinton, Pelosi, Schumer and every other Democratic politician, he's planning to use every other executive agency to do it too. 

Again, telling you his evil plans, because he figures nobody's going to stop him.

Unless we do that in 2024, nobody will ever stop him.

AI, Oh You And Sometimes Why

The Federal Trade Commission is taking aim at ChatGPT at a time when the agency has been slapped down by the courts on multiple occasions, and chair Lina Khan is under heavy fire from Republicans.

 

The Federal Trade Commission has opened an expansive investigation into OpenAI, probing whether the maker of the popular ChatGPT bot has run afoul of consumer protection laws by putting personal reputations and data at risk.

The agency this week sent the San Francisco company a 20-page demand for records about how it addresses risks related to its AI models, according to a document reviewed by The Washington Post. The salvo represents the most potent regulatory threat to date to OpenAI’s business in the United States, as the company goes on a global charm offensive to shape the future of artificial intelligence policy.

Analysts have called OpenAI’s ChatGPT the fastest-growing consumer app in history, and its early success set off an arms race among Silicon Valley companies to roll out competing chatbots. The company’s chief executive, Sam Altman, has emerged as an influential figure in the debate over AI regulation, testifying on Capitol Hill, dining with lawmakers and meeting with President Biden and Vice President Harris.

But now the company faces a new test in Washington, where the FTC has issued multiple warnings that existing consumer protection laws apply to AI, even as the administration and Congress struggle to outline new regulations. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has predicted that new AI legislation is months away.

The FTC’s demands of OpenAI are the first indication of how it intends to enforce those warnings. If the FTC finds that a company violates consumer protection laws, it can levy fines or put a business under a consent decree, which can dictate how the company handles data. The FTC has emerged as the federal government’s top Silicon Valley cop, bringing large fines against Meta, Amazon and Twitter for alleged violations of consumer protection laws.

The FTC called on OpenAI to provide detailed descriptions of all complaints it had received of its products making “false, misleading, disparaging or harmful” statements about people. The FTC is investigating whether the company engaged in unfair or deceptive practices that resulted in “reputational harm” to consumers, according to the document.

The FTC also asked the company to provide records related to a security incident that the company disclosed in March when a bug in its systems allowed some users to see payment-related information, as well as some data from other users’ chat history. The FTC is probing whether the company’s data security practices violate consumer protection laws. OpenAI said in a blog post that the number of users whose data was revealed to someone else was “extremely low.”

OpenAI and the FTC did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent on Thursday morning.

News of the probe comes as FTC Chair Lina Khan is likely to face a combative hearing Thursday before the House Judiciary Committee, where Republican lawmakers are expected to analyze her enforcement record and accuse her of mismanaging the agency. Khan’s ambitious plans to rein in Silicon Valley have suffered key losses in court. On Tuesday, a federal judge rejected the FTC’s attempt to block Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy the video game company Activision.

The agency has repeatedly warned that action is coming on AI, in speeches, blog posts, op-eds and news conferences. In a speech at Harvard Law School in April, Samuel Levine, the director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said the agency was prepared to be “nimble” in getting ahead of emerging threats.

“The FTC welcomes innovation, but being innovative is not a license to be reckless,” Levine said. “We are prepared to use all our tools, including enforcement, to challenge harmful practices in this area.”

 

Khan, quite frankly, has been less than effective in battling Big Business so far, having lost on a number of antitrust court battles involving everything from Facebook to Altria to this week's loss to stop Microsoft from buying gaming giant Activision Blizzard. 

I don't exactly have a lot of faith in her or the agency to stop ChatGPT from running rampant.

Still, she's the FTC chair we have, and I just hope the agency is able to rein in ChatGPT and its competitors before the thousands of layoffs becomes, say, millions.

With the Hollywood writers' strike now turning into a full blown actors' strike, you'd better believe entertainment companies are going to be moving quickly on using AI to replace as much creative talent as possible and as soon as they can, and that's only going to be the start.

Indepen-Dunce Week: All Coked Up

Somebody decided that planting cocaine at the White House made the ultimate "suspicious powder found" prank just so the right could make Hunter Biden, Junkie jokes.

 

A preliminary test indicated that the white powder found inside the White House Sunday evening, prompting a brief evacuation, was cocaine, according to two officials familiar with the matter and the recording of a dispatch from a D.C. fire crew that responded to the incident.

A spokesman for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, said the substance is undergoing further testing to determine what it is, and authorities are looking into how it got into the White House. He said the D.C. fire department determined the substance, which was found in a “work area of the West Wing,” did not present a threat.

The discovery prompted an elevated security alert and a brief evacuation of the executive mansion, Guglielmi said. He said President Biden was not in the White House at the time. Guglielmi said there is “an investigation into the cause and manner” of how the substance entered the White House.

Guglielmi declined to say specifically where in the White House the substance was found or how it was packaged. He said it was found by members of the Uniformed Division of the Secret Service conducting routine rounds through the building.

In a dispatch with an 8:49 p.m. timestamp, a firefighter with the D.C. department’s hazardous materials team radioed the results of a test: “We have a yellow bar saying cocaine hydrochloride.”

The brief broadcast is logged on a website called openmhz.com, which allows people to listen to live and archived radio transmission from police and fire departments. One of the officials familiar with the investigation, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open case, said the 8:49 transmission was from the White House call Sunday night. The official described the amount of the substance as small.

 

The ghouls on the right are having a field day with this nonsense. Yes, Occam's Razor says somebody on the White House staff lost their stash and should be spending several years in both treatment and the slammer, but the bigger issue is again how the Secret Service managed to screw up so badly here and on the White House grounds.

Dunces, indeed...

Last Call For Lordy, There Are Tapes

Ladies and gentlemen, here's audio evidence that Donald Trump committed a federal crime.

CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify.

The recording, which first aired on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360,” includes new details from the conversation that is a critical piece of evidence in special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump over the mishandling of classified information, including a moment when Trump seems to indicate he was holding a secret Pentagon document with plans to attack Iran.

“These are the papers,” Trump says in the audio recording, while he’s discussing the Pentagon attack plans, a quote that was not included in the indictment.

In the two-minute audio recording, Trump and his aides also joke about Hillary Clinton’s emails after the former president says that the document was “secret information.”

“Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails,” Trump’s staffer said.

“No, she’d send it to Anthony Weiner,” Trump responded, referring to the former Democratic congressman, prompting laughter in the room.

Trump’s statements on the audio recording, saying “these are the papers” and referring to something he calls “highly confidential” and seems to be showing others in the room, could undercut the former president’s claims in an interview last week with Fox News’ Bret Baier that he did not have any documents with him.

“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things,” Trump said on Fox. “And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn’t have a document, per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”

Trump pleaded not guilty earlier this month to 37 counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.

The audio recording comes from a July 2021 interview Trump gave at his Bedminster resort for people working on the memoir of Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff. The special counsel’s indictment alleges that those in attendance – a writer, publisher and two of Trump’s staff members – were shown classified information about the plan of attack on Iran. 

 

If you still want to know why Republicans are trying to invent a Joe Biden "bribery scandal" out of smoke and mirrors where nobody can actually come up with the tapes proving anything at all happened, it's because these tapes proving Trump is a crook actually exist.

Food For Thought

The real reason why grocery prices are up 25%-50% since 2020 isn't inflation or supply chain issues, it's good old fashioned corporate greed in the food industry.

 

A level playing field was long a tenet of U.S. antitrust policy. In the 19th century, Congress barred railroads from favoring some shippers over others. It applied this principle to retailing in 1936 with the Robinson-Patman Act, which mandates that suppliers offer the same terms to all retailers. The act allows large retailers to claim discounts based on actual volume efficiencies but blocks them from extracting deals that aren’t also made available to their competitors. For roughly four decades, the Federal Trade Commission vigorously enforced the act. From 1954 to 1965, the agency issued 81 cease-and-desist orders to stop suppliers of milk, tea, oatmeal, candy and other foods from giving preferential prices to the largest grocery chains.

As a result, the grocery retailing sector was enviable by today’s standards. Independent grocery stores flourished, accounting for more than half of food sales in 1958. Supermarket chains like Safeway and Kroger also thrived. This dynamism fed a broad prosperity. Even the smallest towns and poorest neighborhoods could generally count on having a grocery store. And the industry’s diffuse structure ensured that its fruits were widely distributed. Of the nearly nine million people working in retailing overall in the mid-1950s, nearly two million owned or co-owned the store where they worked. There were more Black-owned grocery stores in 1969 than there are today.

Then, amid the economic chaos and inflation of the late 1970s, the law fell into disfavor with regulators, who had come to believe that allowing large retailers to flex more muscle over suppliers would lower consumer prices. For the most part, the law hasn’t been enforced since. As a top Reagan administration official explained in 1981, antitrust was no longer “concerned with fairness to smaller competitors.”

This was a serious miscalculation. Walmart, which seized the opening and soon became notorious for strong-arming suppliers and undercutting local businesses, now captures one in four dollars Americans spend on groceries. Its rise spurred a cascade of supermarket mergers, as other chains sought to match its leverage over suppliers. If the latest of these mergers — Kroger’s bid to buy Albertsons — goes through, just five retailers will control about 55 percent of grocery sales. Food processors in turn sought to counterbalance the retailers by merging. Supermarket aisles may seem to brim with variety, but most of the brands you see are made by just a few conglomerates.

These food giants are now the dominant buyers of crops and livestock. The lack of competition has contributed to the decline in farmers’ share of the consumer grocery dollar, which has fallen by more than half since the 1980s. In the absence of rivals, food conglomerates have over time increasingly been able to raise prices and as a result have reported soaring profits over the past two years. Inflation gives them a cover story, but it’s the lack of competition that allows them to get away with it. Meat prices surged last year among the four companies that control most pork, beef and poultry processing. Companies like PepsiCo and General Mills have also jacked up prices without seeing any loss of sales — a sure sign of uncontested market power.

This has resulted in an ever-worsening cycle: As a system dominated by a few retailers lifts prices across the board — even at Walmart — consumers head to those retailers because of their ability to wrest relatively lower prices or simply because they’re the only options left. Walmart’s share of grocery sales swelled last year as more people flocked to its stores.

Meanwhile, the decline of independent grocers, which disproportionately serve rural small towns and Black and Latino neighborhoods, has left debilitating gaps in our food system. If Food Fresh were to close, residents of Evans County, where the store is, would have to subsist on the limited range of packaged foods sold at a local dollar store or drive about 25 minutes to reach a Walmart. (Nearly a quarter of Evans County residents live in poverty.) Living without a grocery store nearby imposes a daily hardship on people and could lead to an increased risk of diabetes, heart disease and other diet-related illnesses.

Losing small retailers also stifles innovation. New food companies rely on independent retailers to introduce products. But as this diversity of retailers gives way to a monocrop of big chains, start-ups have fewer avenues to success. This results in diminished selection for shoppers, who find store shelves stocked with only what the big food conglomerates choose to produce.

We need to stop big retailers from using their enormous financial leverage over suppliers to tilt the playing field. By resurrecting the Robinson-Patman Act, we could begin to put an end to decades of misguided antitrust policy in which regulators abandoned fair competition in favor of ever-greater corporate scale. There is promising momentum. Last year an unusual coalition of Democratic and Republican lawmakers sent a letter to the F.T.C. urging it to dust off Robinson-Patman. The agency began a broad inquiry in late 2021 into grocery supply issues, which could uncover evidence of price discrimination. This year the agency opened investigations into soft drink and alcohol suppliers for possible violations of the act.

 

So yes, it turns out that America has long had a solution to runaway grocery inflation, it's just that it stopped being enforced (and once again, the culprit was Reagan, the genesis of the modern GOP we see today.) Getting the Robinson-Patman Act retooled for 2023 would be a powerful solution to lower food prices for families across the country.

Of course, as with guns, pharma, housing and basically every other sector of the American economy, it's corporations telling lawmakers how things will be, and the Roberts Court making sure that remains the case. No doubt that the second this act gets used, the Supremes will dismantle the law as unconstitutional against the free speech of Kroger, Walmart, and General Mills.

Last Call For Justice Served, Con't

US Attorney Rachael Rollins is out, resigning before a Justice Department watchdog report on an ethics investigation into her political fundraising appearances drops the hammer on her.

 

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins will resign following a monthslong investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general into her appearance at a political fundraiser and other potential ethics issues, her attorney said Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s watchdog has yet to release its report detailing the findings of its investigation, but an attorney for Rollins told The Associated Press that she will be submitting a letter of resignation to President Joe Biden by close of business Friday.

The resignation of a U.S. attorney amid ethics concerns is an exceedingly rare phenomenon and is especially notable for a Justice Department that under Attorney General Merrick Garland has sought to restore a sense of normalcy and good governance following the turbulent four years of the Trump administration.

Rollins’ attorney said she has been “profoundly honored” to have serve as U.S. attorney and proud of her office’s work but “understands that her presence has become a distraction.” Attorney Michael Bromwich — a former Justice Department inspector general — said Rollins will make herself available to answer questions “after the dust settles and she resigns.”

“The work of the office and the Department of Justice is far too important to be overshadowed by anything else,” Bromwich said.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately comment Tuesday. The inspector general’s office declined to comment.

Rollins was a controversial pick to be Massachusetts’ top federal law enforcer and twice needed Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie for her nomination to move forward in the Senate amid fierce opposition from Republicans, who painted her as a radical.

Before taking the high-profile U.S. attorney job, she was the top prosecutor for Suffolk County, which includes Boston. In her role there, sparred with Boston’s largest police union and pushed ambitious criminal justice changes, most notably a policy not to prosecute certain low-level crimes such as shoplifting.

She was the first woman of color to serve as a district attorney in Massachusetts and the first Black woman to become U.S. attorney for the state.

The Associated Press was the first to report in November that the inspector general’s office had opened an investigation into Rollins over her appearance last year at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser featuring first lady Jill Biden. The inspector general’s office generally investigates allegations of fraud, abuse or violation of other Justice Department policies.

People familiar with the investigation told the AP at the time that the probe had expanded into other areas, including Rollins’ use of her personal cellphone to conduct Justice Department business and a trip she took to California that was paid for by an outside group.

 

Calling Rollins's confirmation "controversial" is being generous. Senate Republicans wanted her gone from moment one, and now Rollins gave them the opening needed to take herself out of the game.

 

Not everyone is cut out to be a US attorney, it seems.

 

What really bothers me is that GOP Sen. Tom Cotton was right. Rollins was "uniquely unfit" for the position, not because of her criminal justice reform positions, but because she wasn't able to follow the goddamn rules.

Good riddance.

A Case Of Information Insecurity

Heads are set to roll after a suspect entered Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan's home, having gotten past his Secret Service detail undetected.

 

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a man entered the home of President Biden’s national security adviser in the middle of the night roughly two weeks ago without being detected by agents guarding his house, according to three government officials.

The unknown man walked into Jake Sullivan’s home at about 3 a.m. one day in late April and Sullivan confronted the individual, instructing him to leave, two of the people briefed on the incident said. There were no signs of forced entry at the home, according to one of the people.

Sullivan has a round-the-clock Secret Service detail. But agents stationed outside the house were unaware that an intruder had gotten inside the home, located in the West End neighborhood of Washington, until the man had already left and Sullivan came outside to alert the agents, the two people said.

The intruder appeared to be intoxicated and confused about where he was, according to people briefed on the incident. There is no evidence the person knew Sullivan or sought to harm him, they said.

In a statement, the Secret Service said it has launched an investigation into the incident and how the intruder accessed Sullivan’s home undetected.

The agency said that it considered the security breach a matter of significant concern.

“While the protectee was unharmed, we are taking this matter seriously and have opened a comprehensive mission assurance investigation to review all facets of what occurred,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in the statement, in response to an inquiry from The Washington Post. “Any deviation from our protective protocols is unacceptable and if discovered, personnel will be held accountable.”

Guglielmi said the Secret Service has deployed additional security precautions for Sullivan and around his home, pending the completion of the investigation.

The White House declined to comment.

 

Pretty scary moment there and I'm glad nobody was hurt, but yes, the results of the investigation need to include the agents who allowed this to be put somewhere else. This is not a job you say "Well, oops" on especially when National Security Advisers have been targeted in the past.

Hopefully the investigation will offer improvements and better operational guideline for the next team.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is covering his tracks when it comes to travel outside the state, because apparently running for president on the campaign trail means the last thing you want people to know is where you are.

With a stroke of a pen, Gov. Ron DeSantis concealed his travel records – past, present and future – from public scrutiny at the same time he’s made frequent trips outside the state as a prelude to a possible presidential campaign kick-off.

It was difficult to trace the governor’s travel before he signed the bill into law Thursday night, which went into effect immediately. Hundreds of requests for the records going back more than a year are still in the pipeline.

Now it will be even harder, First Amendment advocates said.

“The retroactivity makes it such that we’re not going to get anything related to his travel,” said Michael Barfield, director of public access for the Florida Center for Government Accountability.

The bill, approved along party lines in both chambers, exempts travel records maintained by law enforcement agencies for the governor, his immediate family, the lieutenant governor, Cabinet members, legislative leaders and other dignitaries.

It also shields the names of guests to the governor’s mansion on non-government business.

While the bill applies to pending requests, a spokeswoman with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which maintains those records, said they will not be expunged.

“We’re still going to process requests like we always have,” Florida Department of Law Enforcement spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger said, denying that any pending requests are going to automatically be denied. “If there’s an exemption, we’ll apply it.”

When a record comes up, the FDLE’s public records officers pull it and review it to see if anything needs redaction. Each report is reviewed in the order received, Plessinger said.

“Once a request is received it can take a few months to review because of the volume of requests,” she said.

FDLE has over 700 requests on the backlog, some asking for investigations, member emails, as well as travel records, she said.

Reporters and the public will still be able to get the cost of security and travel, but not details such as which hotels they stay in because they frequently return to the same hotels, she said.

The annual reports summarizing the cost of travel and security for the governor, his family and other state officials and dignitaries will continue to be published, she said.

Republicans, who hold a supermajority in both chambers, said the law was needed to ensure the safety and security of the governor and other officials, as well as the officers who protect them when they travel. The exemption would prevent people from mapping out their future movements as well.

 

The trouble to have his party craft legislation to specifically hide who state officers meet with means apparently it's none of Florida's business who DeSantis does business with, and protecting DeSantis from having to tell voters is crucial enough to make a law prohibiting it.

Voters should respond by throwing the lot of them out of office.

Last Call For A Supreme Government Takeover

The Roberts Court has agreed to take up a case that could spell the end of regulatory federal agencies. TPM's Kate Riga:

The Supreme Court opened a new front in its war against the administrative state Monday when it took up a case that asks it to consider overruling a doctrine that has long helped form the basis of executive branch agencies’ authority.

The Chevron doctrine, stemming from a 1984 Supreme Court decision, gives government agencies deference in how they choose to interpret congressional statutes they administer. Congress traditionally delegates authority to agencies in broad strokes — say, for example, telling the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce air pollution in accordance with the Clean Air Act. Under Chevron, the EPA would be given leeway in using its expertise to determine how best to achieve that.

The right-wing legal world is passionately committed to weakening the administrative state, the parts of the government that are charged with regulating corporate polluters, protecting workers’ rights, dictating public health policy and more. That attitude has become evident in its members that sit on the bench, who have largely welcomed cases that challenge agency authority.

A group of familiar far-right groups, including the Cato Institute, National Right to Work Foundation, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and former Trump attorney John Eastman all filed amicus briefs asking the Court to take up the case.

The case tacked on the broad Chevron challenge as an additional question to the heart of the dispute, which centers on the National Marine Fisheries Service. The Court only agreed to take up that second part of the question, “whether the court should overrule Chevron, or at least clarify that statutory silence concerning controversial powers expressly but narrowly granted elsewhere in the statute does not constitute an ambiguity requiring deference to the agency.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself.

The overturning of Chevron would be somewhat less of a legal earthquake than it would have been before the right-wing judges amassed such power on the Supreme Court, as they largely have ignored the doctrine when presented with agency actions they don’t like. But still, and enduringly at lower courts, the Chevron doctrine is a bedrock in agency authority — one that the Court seems primed to take a whack at.

 

 In other words, the end of Chevron would mean the end of nearly all the regulatory power of the executive branch and all of its executive agencies, and courts filled with Trump appointees would be able to wreck those agencies and tie up even basic regulatory power in courts for decades.

It would mean the end of enforcement of things like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, the FDIC, the CFPB, and who knows, probably everything else the Executive cabinet agencies do. It would be awful. Red states could sue to stop just about everything, and they will.

Trump getting three appointees is the end of a lot of America as you know it.

Last Call For A Supreme Dodge

To my surprise, the Supreme Court ruled to block Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's ruling on mifepristone 7-2, meaning that millions of women will be allowed to continue using the drug.

For now, at least.

 

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the most commonly used abortion pill in the U.S. to remain widely available.

The court blocked in full a decision by Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on April 7 that had invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s longtime approval of mifepristone and handed a sweeping victory to abortion opponents.

Two of the nine justices — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — said they would have let part of Kacsmaryk's ruling take effect.

The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, which makes the name brand version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, had asked the justices to step in after a federal appeals court kept in place a number of provisions in Kacsmaryk's order that would have imperiled widespread access to the drug, including restrictions on distributing the pill to patients by mail.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issued a temporary stay of Kacsmaryk's ruling April 14, which was extended for two days Wednesday while the justices considered what steps to take.

Alito said in a brief dissenting opinion Friday that a decision to suspend regulatory changes made since 2016 would not have prevented mifepristone from being available.

"At present, the applicants are not entitled to a stay because they have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the interim," Alito wrote.

"Contrary to the impression that may be held by many, that disposition would not express any view on the merits of the question whether the FDA acted lawfully in any of its actions regarding mifepristone," he added.

The court's decision means women can still obtain mifepristone by mail, take it at home and use it up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, as litigation continues in the lower court. The generic version of the drug, made by GenBioPro, will also continue to be available.

The case will now go back to the 5th Circuit for oral arguments before a three-judge panel on May 17. Nothing will change mifepristone’s availability in the interim.

 

So the legal fight will continue in the months ahead. I was right about Alito siding with the 5th Circuit, but he only got Clarence Thomas to agree with him, and none of the other four conservatives.

 

That's a good sign for now, but the road is going to be long on this one.

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

This is, potentially, a real, actual Biden administration scandal involving the Mexico border as DHS has searched the office of the agency's top border intelligence official and carted them off for questioning.

 

THE DEPARTMENT OF Homeland Security intelligence official in charge of tracking cross-border threats was escorted from his office on Monday by federal police and security after an afternoon search that left his office sealed with crime tape, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the events.

The official in question is Brian Sulc, executive director of the Transnational Organized Crime Mission Center at DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis in Washington. Sulc has been placed on administrative leave. He is under investigation for an alleged security violation, bringing a personal electronic device inside the secure office, where phones and electronic devices are prohibited. He has not been arrested nor charged with a crime.

At about 4:15 p.m. on Monday, three squad cars from the Federal Protective Service — a DHS law-enforcement body tasked with protecting the department and federal buildings — drove into DHS’s northwest Washington complex with flashing lights. The FPS officers joined security on the third floor of the secure building to search Sulc’s office. While they were doing the search, Sulc was escorted out of the building flanked by security and FPS and taken to a different location on the DHS campus for questioning, two sources said.

The office has been sealed shut with crime tape, and evidence seals were placed around the door and across the keyhole so no one can enter.

Sulc is in charge of the office that produces intelligence assessments on border security, the opioid epidemic, and other high-stakes policy issues. Those assessments include intelligence on how fentanyl is crossing into the United States, as well as attempts to identify cartel members and human-trafficking operatives on both sides of the border. They’re used to inform policy decisions at the highest levels of DHS and elsewhere in the Biden administration.

“He is a big deal,” one source with direct knowledge of the search of Sulc’s office. “He does the border, all the big issues and crises. This is why this is all so shocking.”

Sulc is a career official who has held the post since March 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has worked for DHS since September 2008.

Sulc did not respond to emails, calls, texts, or voice messages left on his home and cellphone numbers. His work-cellphone voice mailbox was full, and he did not respond to a LinkedIn message.

Asked about Sulc, a DHS official tells Rolling Stone: “DHS is committed to ensuring all operational security protocols are followed and is conducting an inquiry into a reported security incident. DHS will not comment on ongoing internal investigations. DHS conducts its national security mission with adherence to the highest standards.”

 

This of course coming on the heels of San Jose's police union head being arrested on charges of trafficking fentanyl from Mexico's cartels last month.

 

The executive director for a Northern California police union who was charged with attempting to illegally import synthetic opioids from India and other countries has been fired from her job, officials said Friday.

Joanne Marian Segovia, who was the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, was arrested last week on charges she attempted to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

Starting in 2015, Segovia had dozens of drug shipments mailed to her San Jose home from India, Hong Kong, Hungary and Singapore with manifests listing their contents as “wedding party favors,” “gift makeup,” “chocolate and sweets” and “food supplement,” according to a federal criminal complaint.

Segovia, 64, at times used her work computer to make the orders and at least once used the union’s UPS account to ship the drugs within the country, federal prosecutors said.

Her attorney, Will Edelman, did not immediately respond Friday to a voicemail seeking comment.

The police association fired her after completing an initial internal investigation, union officials said in a statement.

An outside investigator will be hired to conduct a comprehensive “no-holds-barred” probe of Segovia’s alleged crimes, determine to what extent she utilized union resources and whether that could have been prevented, they said.

“The abhorrent criminal conduct alleged against Ms. Segovia must be the impetus to ensuring our internal controls at the POA are strong and that we enact any changes that could have identified the alleged conduct sooner,” said Sean Pritchard, president of the union.

Federal officials began investigating Segovia last year after finding her name and home address on the cellphone of a suspected drug dealer who is part of a network that ships controlled substances made in India to the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the complaint. That drug trafficking network has distributed hundreds of thousands of pills in 48 states, federal prosecutors said. 

 

We're going to find that these two stories are almost certainly related, and not in a good way.

 

House Republicans could have a real field day with this if they weren't so completely incompetent themselves.

We'll see how big this gets, but the connecting factor here is the Mexican border and drug cartels, and this could be massive.